


One Tweak of the Tiniest Cell

by TUNiU



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Torchwood
Genre: A million children, Doctor Who 50th Anniversary, F/M, Gallifrey, Genderswap, M/M, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-12-30 10:51:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 43,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18313988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TUNiU/pseuds/TUNiU
Summary: This took me nearly 5 years to finish after the Doctor Who 50th anniversary. The Moment was such an underutilized device. What if she saw all the past and future and decided to give the Doctor a gift in exchange for not using her to destroy a planet. This is one way out of many that Gallfirey could have returned after the time war. I'd like to think this is a unique interpretation for the Return of the Time Lords.





	1. The One Moment Preface

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this over many years starting at the end of 2013. In that time, I wrote such twists that I thought were so clever and no one would see coming, until Steven Moffat used them in his various episodes. I'm sure with the hints the show gave us in The Doctor's Wife, a gender-swapping Time Lord main character was the most logical next step, but I wrote this months and months before we ever saw the Missy Master. When that episode aired, I lost all enthusiasm for this fic ever being read by others, because I felt that my writing wasn't as good as the show did. So this fic has sat languishing on a lost and forgotten thumb drive.

**[This fic now has art](https://thisusernameisunique.tumblr.com/post/184003240480/available-to-read-as-a-complete-fic-on-my-ao3).**

**The One Moment preface:**

_\--You know the sound the Tardis makes, that wheezing groaning? That sound brings hope wherever it goes._

_\--Yes, yes I like to think it does._

_\--To anyone who hears it Doctor. Anyone. However lost. Even you._

The Moment sat on the ground. With no one around to interact with, it was just a box, just the most dangerous weapon in the universe, just a lonely being. It stayed there in the dust, in the hut, on the moon of Gallifrey.

Wind swirled. A wheeze groaned. A blue box faded into view. The door opened and out walked the Doctor-who-forgets. He stared, seeming to come to a decision as he adjusted his bowtie. He approached the Moment.

“I can’t just leave you here, can I?” He carried the box-form into the Tardis and set it down on one of the curving consoles.

It caught snippets of the Doctor’s thoughts, his brain nowhere near as coherent of purpose as the Doctor-who-wasn’t. Verbal communication would again be necessary.

“Swords into ploughshares?” The Interface for the Moment blinked into view. “How do you share a plough?”

“Ploughshears,” the Doctor corrected absentmindedly, as he piloted the Tardis.

“Oh, that makes more sense.”

The Doctor looked up at the familiar voice. “Why him?” he asked, staring at the Interface’s current visage.

The Moment gestured to its body. “You admired him, you loved him. He was a good man.”

The Doctor stared at the face and form it held. It was painful, in the way old photographs are; a momentary jolt with the realization he hadn’t thought about Rory in days, months, years. Old friends locked safely in the back of his mind because it hurt to think of their stories.

The Doctor steeled himself against the hurt. He couldn’t yell at an ultimate weapon, well he could, he had, but--. “You don’t want to destroy, else why show me my future.” The Doctor turned away to fiddle with some buttons but The Moment-Rory was again in front of him at the other side of the Tardis control console. “You’re creative, clever.” Moment-Rory smiled slyly at the compliment. “If you could be anything, what would you be?”

The Moment looked at him as though no one had ever asked him this question. The Time Lords who watched over it in the Omega Archive had probably never even talked to it.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, think about it.” The Doctor flipped the switches that would take them into the vortex.

**Darilium, - 5350**

River lay in bed, staring at the Doctor’s new face. He lay sleeping next to her, one hand on her hip. She wondered if the face was created as his body’s reaction to the previous face. It seemed the exact opposite. It was strong and craggy where the other had been delicate and young. Oh but she just knew that accent came from exposure to her mother.

From their suite room across the path from the restaurant, River could faintly hear the Singing Towers. They’d been going for a few days now, off and on. The two of them had been here a month already, though it was still all one night; the sun would not even finish setting for four years.

She sighed. Twenty four years straight and then…

The Doctor’s fingers twitched against her bare skin. He’d be waking up soon. It was all very well, living happily ever after, but she’d need to get a job soon. He would never last in one, and they couldn’t live off the Restaurateur’s good will forever. Bless the Doctor. He never thought of the practicalities.

Time to take the Tardis for a spin; see what job opportunities Darilium had for a Professor of Archaeology.

**Poosh, - 7.3/acorn/43**

On the No-Longer-Missing-So-Nevermind-Now Moon of Poosh, the Doctor sat in jail waiting for his appeal. The Pooshian’s form of government worked well, in most cases, except when the heads of state lost their heads and the computer advisors had opportunity to run amuck. The advisors had all been rounded up, new heads elected. All that was left was the mass appeals for political dissidents.

With no companion, and no danger to life, limb, or Tardis, the Doctor was taking this opportunity to relax. The cell was quite comfortable for a room with locks on the wrong side of the doors.

The Moment blinked into view, across from him at the datatable. He stared at her through the entertainment video playing in midair, something with sweeping romance and explosions. A hand gesture from him had the video paused and minimized. The Moment’s form was new to him, a woman. She was tall and thin, with dark hair, a long nose, and high cheekbones.

“Who’s that, then?” he asked.

The Moment thought hard and pursed her lips. “There’s a word attached to this form, ‘spoi-lers’. Is that his name, ‘Spoilers’? Spoi-lers, spoi—you don’t like this word?”

The Doctor leaned back on the sofa, and forced his expression to clear, “it’s a difficult word to accept.”

“Hmm, you asked me what I wanted to be. I want to be used. I don’t want to sit on a shelf, ignored. I want interaction. I want to help. I saw you before, with your companion, (now the Moment was Clara) you’ve had many, but I don’t want them to die (now, Adric) or leave me (now, Melanie). I want someone forever.” The Moment startled, peered intently at the Doctor, “him, that man you’re thinking of--this man.”

The Doctor stared at the face of Captain Jack Harkness.

 

**Earth, - January 2005**

From high in orbit, a wooden box with cogs and gears sat on the end of the Tardis doorway, peering at the slowly rotating Earth below. The Doctor sat next to it, his legs swinging into the starlit abyss beyond the open doors.

“Are you sure this is what you want?” the Doctor asked, his hand resting on the box’s warm surface.

“Yes.”

The Doctor tipped the box over the edge of the Tardis. The Moment sat next to him and they both watched as Earth’s gravity caught the item. It left a fiery trail as it fell through the atmosphere.

The Moment looked at him with Rose’s face. “This emotion: _compassion_. I like it. It’s a good word. It saved you, and Gallifrey.”

“Maybe it’ll save you,” the Doctor offered.

“I hope so.” The Moment-Rose faded as the box that was her form crashed into the Welsh landscape.

 


	2. Chapter 2

_It is a well observed phenomenon that in the presence of the Silence, pregnant women experience momentary pains. –_ Excerpt from: How to Tell If You’re Being Followed by a Silent, a health pamphlet by the post-mortem Gideon Vandeluer

**Trenzalore**

In her quarters aboard the Papal Mainframe, Cardinal Kovarian watched through her window at the thousands of ships orbiting the planet Trenzalore. After three hundred years, The Great Siege between the Doctor and Everyone Else showed no signs of ending. The entire Papal force was surrounding that planet, and had been for centuries, keeping the other races in check with an anti-technology field and the threat of vast weapons of unmaking. However, it was only a matter of time before someone tried something and the entire impasse crumbled. The resulting war could change the face of the entire sector for millennia.

_Curse the Doctor and his name._

The Mother Superious, Tasha Lem, was too soft-hearted towards the Doctor; a product of her history with him. No one in the Faith knew just how Tasha knew the Doctor, but for all her life as the Mother Superious (there was no life before the Faith, due to memory wiping upon confirmation) she and the Doctor had had an accord. Tasha might be satisfied with a stalemate; but Kovarian tired of the war, she tired of the man.

She activated her com unit. “Colonel Manton, prepare my ship for schism.”

The face of Colonel Manton appeared on her screen. His normally severe countenance showed alarm at her decision. “Ma’am?”

“Find me clerics who are dissatisfied with the current siege. My _Justinian_ must be of one purpose.”

“And what is our purpose?” Colonel Manton asked.

“To rid the universe of the Doctor before he reaches Trenzalore.”

 

**London, Earth - December 1986**

It was storming when the woman arrived at the Royal Hope Training hospital with a young boy. The wind lashed, drenching her with rain as she ran to the front entrance. She handed the sleeping child to the reception nurse and left without saying a word. If she tried to speak, she would cry. Security and hospital porters tried to follow her, but she disappeared into the night.

 

**Cardiff, Earth - December 2004**

Captain Jack Harkness recognized a temporal refugee when he saw one. It was the way that time subtly bent around them, like a straw through water. As the newly promoted head of Torchwood Three (current employees: three) Jack was in no way prepared to deal with cross-temporal consequences; however, recon at a nice restaurant was better than spending hours on the phone to Whitehall arguing for more funding.

The _Live Lounge_ had many attractors: good food, cheap wine (3 quid a bottle) and live entertainment. Jack sat at a corner table, picking his way through the remnants of his fish and chips, listening to the music. The current entertainment, a singer, mid 40s-- _lovely_ hips--finished her song, bowed to the middling applause and left the stage. Jack had timed his visit so that he’d leave around when her work ended in the hopes of trailing her back to her place. Unlike every other day, she did not stop at the bar on her way out, for a drink and a chat with the barman. She might have been chatting with someone, a friend, or boyfriend, backstage. Jack decided to give her a few minutes more before going in after her.

“You know, on some planets, staring is the prelude to a proposal.” The woman came up from behind him and sat at the empty seat opposite. “You _are_?”

“Curious,” Jack replied.

She rose to leave.

Jack reached out and grabbed her wrist to stop her. He froze startled. Beneath his fingers, her radial artery pulsed with an inhuman beat. He stared up into her eyes.

“Let’s not make a scene,” she stared behind him.

“Is there a problem?” a burly man came around to the table.

She grinned a shark’s smile. “Old ex, doesn’t know when to let go.” She pulled her hand out of Jack’s grasp. “Leave the face intact Clyde, he’s ever so pretty.” She left Jack to the tender mercies of Clyde the Bouncer, who proceeded to show Jack just how protective Clyde was of her.

 

**Stormcage**

_“Right, okay, interesting.”_

River Song stared for a moment at the spot the Tardis had dematerialized from. She’d just kissed the Doctor and he’d had no idea what to do. She shut the world away with a slide of her cell bars and sat on her bed.

Damn that man. And he’d dropped her off at the wrong time-period. Though he would have no way of knowing what the right time period was, the way she kept her secrets. She’d just have to find a way back to her Tardis on her own before The Doctor noticed it was missing. He would get ever so cross that she was cheating time away from their happily ever after so quickly.

It was no good hoping for quiet. The storm whipping around outside the prison was still going, and would still be going for hundreds of years. However, after decades of days spent in prison, it was easy to ignore. A quick inventory of her cell showed that her younger self was off on one of her jaunts and hadn’t left the vortex manipulator behind. Hopefully the slow path wouldn’t take too long; she wouldn’t want to meet herself. Two Rivers in the same place at the same time was always murder on her hair.

River brought her attention inward and listened to her timeline. Trying to find a sensation of probable futures she could use to get home. She let the rhythm sing to her, hoping for some indication of how to get back to the right Tardis before the Stormcage Guards noticed she was a River from a later date.

Something was off, right now. The temporal flow was different around her, she could almost hear a bold happy/sad song weaving through her timeline and extending far into the future. It hadn’t been there before, and yet, in the way of temporal mechanics, it had always been there.

Before she could pick at the anomaly, she heard the rhythmic steps of a guard squad. There were four of them, and they wore face masks.

Now how did she act in this time-period? “Hello, boys.” Flirty was always a good bet.

“You will come with us, Doctor Song.”

The guards led her down the familiar path; the slightly damp corridors, the lift that went up three levels and the enclosed footbridge to the guard tower. They sat her in the familiar office and left.

The man who sat at the warden’s desk was not familiar. River resisted the urge to catalogue all the weaknesses of this new person, a relic of her brainwashing. He was fit, with dark hair, dark eyes, as far from the portly ruddy-faced warden as was possible within the same species, assuming he _was_ the same species. He had a datapad in his hands and was reviewing it.

He looked up at her. “Why do you come back?” She couldn’t place the accent.

“Excuse me?”

“My predecessor was in the habit of adding decades to your sentence every time you escaped.” He gestured to the datapad and presumably River’s prison record upon it. “No one could hope to serve 12,000 life sentences, so it was a pointless gesture really. What I’m interested in, is why you come back. You obviously have a reliable and foolproof method of leaving this place. Wherever you go, we can’t track you, so if you’d stay away, you’d be free. Why come back?”

“I live here,” River replied. In jail for a crime she didn’t commit, to protect the man she loved, to hide from those who would use her against her family.

He waited for her to explain, but River kept quiet. When he realized she would not be elaborating, he hummed. “Yes, well…” She watched him as he brought up a new document on his datapad. “The Shadow Archive has released to us some interesting documents concerning you. It seems you will be spending quite a few years in Ancient Cardiff,” he eyed her strangely, “quite soon if I’m any judge. As such, I must award you compassionate leave, for reasons of temporal integrity.” He looked away.

The guards often said; _River Song is never surprised by anything_ , so she made sure not to give away her surprise. “Are there any conditions?”

“You will be given a house, some money. Try not to cause any trouble.”

So, a quick detour before going home. She couldn’t exactly refuse on the excuse that she wasn’t the right River.

 

**Cardiff, Earth - December 2004**

Jack limped out of the alleyway behind the lounge. He checked his wristcomp. It may not be able to travel in time anymore but it could still tell him what the mysterious woman was. As long as he had her profile in the computer, his new computer expert could track her with the Torchwood mainframe.

A glance at the scanner results had him stumbling against the brickwork in shock: the two hearts of a Time Lord.

_“He’s coming, the one you’re looking for.” A girl who was not a girl read the tarot cards and proclaimed, “But, a century will turn twice before you find each other again.”_

_“What will I do in the meantime?” Jack asked her but she had no answer for him._

 

**London, Earth - September, 1898**

The girl-who-wasn’t picked up her tarot cards, shuffled them, and placed them in a cloth pouch at her waist. She got up from the table, leaving coin for the barman, and left. She carefully picked her way through the detritus of the alley. Though the bar was in the unfortunate section of town, no ruffians or braggarts accosted her on her way. Only when she was sure no one was watching, did she snap her fingers. An invisible door creaked opened in the wall, and she walked into a hidden room. The door closed.

The wall faded from view with a gust of wind.

Inside the Tardis, the girl was picked up by her mother. “ _Maaaaam_!” she squealed as she was spun around.

Her Tad joined them and squeezed them in a big hug. “I’m proud of you, Rhosyn, you were very brave.”

 

**Stormcage**

The new warden accompanied River to the medical wing for her trans-temporal checkup. The guards were nowhere to be seen and she wasn’t shackled. The walk was almost pleasant, if such a term could be applied to a stroll through a prison.

In front of them, the perspex doors with the green crescent slid open. “Because this is an official release, you’ll have to be implanted with a recall device.” The warden looked almost abashed at his prison’s protocol. “I’ve had them max the timer. I don’t really know how long it’ll take you to do what you need to.” He stared at a point slightly off her eyes. “Well, good luck.” He motioned for her to enter.

River approached the sole nurse hand-bot and stood still for the med scan. As the doors swished close, River heard the warden whisper, “I’m sorry.”

“Please stay still,” the bot chided her for turning to look at the now closed doors. It scanned her with an outturned palm.

“Of course.”

After the scan was done, the bot had River stand under a sterilization field to remove any future pathogens that could cause trouble for a past population. Normally, her vortex manipulator did this automatically, but she wasn’t going to mention it. It was always so annoying when the guards did a surprise cell inspection for contraband materials.

Methodically, the bot removed an injector from its chest unit. “This is your recall implant. It is set for 2,628,000 minutes from when you leave our custody.” _Five years,_ River thought. _The Doctor’s still asleep on Darilium and he won’t even notice that the River he wakes to is an older River than he fell asleep with._ The bot placed it under the skin on the inside of her left wrist. There, a small readout shone through the skin, displaying a small digital countdown in a dull blue color. Unless someone was looking very close, it would look like just another vein under the soft skin. Still, it would be better to cover it, _perhaps a nice watch, for the symmetry._

Once the injector had been placed in an autoclave bin, the bot turned to her, though without a face that gesture was mostly pointless. “You are pregnant. As you are only two weeks along I am allowed to offer you an abortion. Would you like to terminate your pregnancy?”

River paused. _Oh, but even he would notice a toddler…eventually._

 

**Torchwood, Earth - December 2004**

Tracking the mysterious woman wasn’t hard. Jack’s new computer expert, Toshiko, found her with just a little finagling of the Torchwood Mainframe. Not only did her bio-signs register but there was a bit of anachronistic technology imbedded inside her. Residual traces showed her primary residence was a little house in Pontcanna.

“Is she a threat, sir?” Toshiko asked, a bit cowed. A year after hiring her out of a Black Archive prison and Jack still hadn’t broken her of that frame of mind. Curse UNIT and their treatment of prisoners.

“I don’t know. She’s clever, though.” Jack perused the multiple computer screens. On one was a birth certificate and current driver’s license. The other had bank statements and an NHS record. “Whoever she is, she’s embedded herself perfectly.”

He went to the weapons cabinet, selected his favorite Webley and his comms earpiece. He swished into his greatcoat and fixed his collar. “Monitor my frequency; I’ll be back in a few hours.”

 

**Stormcage**

River stared at the handbot. She needed to think, fast. A tiny voice inside was screaming in a panic. She only had one night with the Doctor left. Oh, it was true that he would never notice she’d nicked the Tardis while he was sleeping, but…one night. Twenty four years. That wasn’t enough time to raise a Time Lord baby. She’d be leaving them to fend for themselves.

Her diary was almost full, just three pages left. How could she fit twenty four years of raising a child into three pages? Was that the point? Was this her last day ever and there would be no need to write it down for reference, because she would be raising the child linearly?

There was still a chance…that’s what spoilers meant. It meant not knowing the future, because knowing it would change the past.

The Doctor had given her the diary and told her what to write in it. So, he’d seen her using it before she’d met him in Berlin, and he’d made a diary and given it to her after Berlin.

Why? They both had the minds of Time Lords. It would be a rubbish Time Lord indeed who couldn’t remember future timelines of the past. To be fair, that would explain why he used a diary, but not why she would need one.

…Oh, she was clever. They were primarily back to front. His firsts were her lasts. So, her last adventure would be with the earliest version of him she would ever meet. Everything she did in that meeting would matter. He’d meet her, she’d play the diary game – she’d have to, to make it such an important token of their interactions—even though she would know they hadn’t done anything together yet.

Something happened to her in that adventure---something big, so presume its death. Maybe the diary gets left behind, maybe it doesn’t. Maybe he reads it, maybe he doesn’t. If he does read it, from then on he would know her by the events written down. Anything not written down must not have happened to her.

He’d never told her what not to write in it.

So she never writes the pregnancy down, because if he knew about it, he would never be able to hide it from his face. What else does she not write down? Does she have years of more adventures stealing the Tardis whenever The Doctor on Darilium falls asleep?

She’d done this to herself. She would do this to herself. Trapped herself within the pages of a diary to give her this freedom.

Freedom from her last night; freedom to raise a child by herself. But… _five years?_ Is that all she’d get?

 

::-::

**Pontcanna, Earth - December 2004**

Jack couldn’t have been parked for more than five minutes before there was a knock at the driver’s window. It was the mysterious woman, just come home from the shops, going by the bags in her hands.

“If you’re going to bother surveilling me, do it where it’s nice and warm.” She gestured to her front door, a few houses down. “I can make some tea,” she added as though tea were the best thing ever, an offer that couldn’t be refused.

He followed her to her house. “To be honest, I was expecting you sooner,” she handed him one of her bags as she fished house-keys from her purse. “Torchwood is slipping if I can remain under the radar for so long with you at the helm.”

The door opened from the inside, “Is that you, Miss River?” A severe girl with plaited black hair let them in. “Barney’s just settled down.”

Jack watched the new girl in front of him. She was very modest with a black floor-length dress. The temporal traces and the visible lack of dental care placed her somewhen far ago.

He kept quiet. Very few people practiced it, but one of the best ways to gather information was to just listen. Already he had a name for this mysterious time-traveller. He and River made their way into the kitchen where they settled the grocery bags. On the corner of the kitchen table was a small bassinet with a baby in it. The babe looked to be only a month old.

River dug around her purse and withdrew a few gold coins of unknown provenance.

“Jenny, dear, I won’t be needing your services anymore.”

Jenny leaned away from Jack and eyed him strangely. “This him, then?”

River eyed Jack as well. “Mmm. Yes.” River slipped the coins into Jenny’s hand.

Jenny stared at the money. “Oh, no. This is too much,” she said surprised. “I couldn’t, miss.”

“Nonsense. You buy yourself and the wife something nice. She might like to enclose the arboretum, grow some plants she remembers from childhood.”

“Yes, miss.”

“Give her my love, and Strax too.”

“Of course, miss.” Jenny took a device from her skirt pocket and vanished with a crackle of light and smoke.

River proceeded to place away all the groceries, leaving out some tea bags. “Don’t worry about her, she’s gone back home. Jenny doesn’t like the future much, only comes out when it’s necessary.” She filled the electric kettle and set it back on the counter.

Barney made a snuffling noise, and cried out. River went and picked him up; she walked around the room, rocking him. On a pass by Jack, Barney’s eyes caught him. There was a moment where his face scrunched and he let out a whimper.

“Shhh, shhh, it’s alright,” River soothed. She caressed his temples. “I see it too. It’s okay.”

“See what?” Jack asked once the baby had been soothed back to sleep against her shoulder. By then, the water had boiled and the tea was steeping.

“Relax, it’s nothing bad, just Barnabus doesn’t understand. To him, you’re like a bright light or a surprise hug, it’s startling.” She placed the baby back in his bassinet.

“I know you’re both Time Lords.” Jack indicated the scanner tech in his wrist-strap. “Records show you can change your face, so either you’re the Doctor, or someone else who survived the war. Either way you can explain what happened to me. I don’t die, I just come back. Can you fix me?”

“Damn that silly man,” River muttered low. She sat down at the counter. “I’m not the Doctor, and I can’t fix you. You’re a fixed point.” She paused. “I’ve never seen a person be one before,” she said strangely as stared at her son. “There are too many fixed events in your life. This, whatever it is, is designed to ensure you make it to those events.”

“Which events?”

“I don’t know. They could be anything, something as simple as bumping into a person on your way down the street, or something as complex as saving an entire planet. They’re just something that must happen and you’re the person that does them. Once the last one is finished, you will end.”

“So I could just die at any moment,” he snapped his fingers, “just like that?”

“Probably not instantly. But whatever force is bringing you back will stop. You’d be left to live out whatever time remains and then…”

Jack stared at his tea. It was a relief to know he would end. That one day he wouldn’t be dragged screaming into life. It was also terrifying to know that any death could be the last; he’d forgotten what it felt like to fear oblivion.

“I wouldn’t be so relieved. Whenever it is, it’s so far out I can barely perceive it.”

He swallowed his tea, wishing it was something stronger. “How far?”

“Billions.”

Jack let out a choked whimper.

“I’m sorry.”

After another cup of tea had been drunk, Jack composed himself. “Why are you here?” His stern expression wavered. “Probably should have lead with that. I’m not very intimidating right now, am I?”

River half-smiled. “I’m a mother. Even at your best, I’m the most intimidating thing in this room.”

Jack chuckled. “True.”

“I’m here because I must be. Where I’m from, records show I worked for Torchwood for years, and right now you can use all the help you can get.”

 

**Torchwood, Earth - December 2004**

“Ey, who’s this then?” Owen asked when Jack led River and Barney into the Torchwood hub the following day. A rope of red liquorice hung from Owen’s mouth, bouncing as he spoke.

“River, meet Owen, he’s always that rude. That’s Tosh, Suzie’s over there. Everybody this is River Song, our newest employee.”

“Why’s she got a kid?” Jack, Tosh and Suzie stared at him. “I’m just saying; this job isn’t conducive to the family lifestyle. It’s a fair bit of rough and tumble.”

River smiled. “That won’t be a problem for me.”

Owen alt-tabbed out of his current computer screen and stood up from his desk. “Come on, let’s do the medscans, I got things to do--”

“--porn to watch--,” Jack added.

“--Slanderer.”

“No scans,” River said.

“Everyone has a scan, luv, that’s the rules.”

“No scans.” Her tone brokered no argument.

“ _Jaaack_?” Owen appealed to their leader.

Jack stared at River. “No scans,” he agreed. He led them into his office, where they could hear Owen ranting about the injustice of it all.

“-- just trying to make sure Torchwood isn’t infiltrated by _aliens_. Don’t blame me when you wake up with your innards strewn about.”

 

**Butetown, Earth - January 2005**

Jack peered down into the churned dirt. At the end of a long, deep divot of upturned earth, a battered brown box laid slightly smoking into the night. He took the gloves handed to him by River, who was lighting the scene, and jumped over the edge into the gulley. Owen was already at the object, taking scans for Toshiko back at the hub.

“Well, I can tell you it’s made of wood,” Owen pronounced, his breath steaming in the air.

“I’m not seeing any debris from a capsule,” River said, as she cast an eye over the surrounding parkland.

Jack approached the item. It was a small cube, about a foot on each side; extremely tattered and dented. Gold gears and swirls were inlaid in the sides and it held an inner dull blue glow. “No, look at these scorch marks, it came through on its own.”

Owen hummed in agreement, and took a pair of tweezers to the box to retrieve a sample. As soon as the metal tips made contact, the box disintegrated into filaments, revealing a small coral the size of a washing  sponge.

“Oops,” Owen winced.

From above, River gasped.

Jack felt a presence poke at his mind. It wasn’t invasive, more a childish ‘ _hello_ ,’ than anything hurtful. “Hello,” he replied. He kneeled among the remnants of the box and cradled the coral in his hands. The coral purred in his mind; it was so happy to find him specifically.

“So, we’re just ignoring protocol now, are we?” Owen groaned disgustedly.

“For this, damn right.” Jack stood up and saw River kneeling down from the rise. He walked over to her, showing her the coral. “Is it…?” To him, it looked like the material of the support struts from the Doctor’s Tardis.

River nodded. “It’s just a baby, though.”

Jack thought about his broken wristcomp, and how he was trapped in a linear life. _Babies grow up._ “How long do you think?”

“Oooh, centuries.”

Jack laughed. “I’m not going anywhere.”

The mesmerizing effect of the revelation was shattered by the loud clicks that echoed when Owen shut his examination case. “I’ve collected all the bits of the box, so if we can get inside before my bollocks freeze off, I’d be much obliged.”

 

**Cardiff, Earth - September 2006**

River stepped through the quiet Hub, Barney on her hip. Everyone was at home or away by now, given the day off by Jack; too grateful to comment. River knew better. The sensors were off, the mainframe powered down. Torchwood 3 was blind.

About an hour earlier, River had sensed the arrival of the Tardis, and so knew exactly why Jack, who always talked about finding the Doctor, was not leaping at the chance. Instead, Jack sat in his office nursing a tumbler of some--no doubt, _very_ \--potent alcohol.

“When Torchwood 1 calls--and they will--you’re to tell them our sensors went down because of a glitch at 15:43 local. We have no data on the earthquake that will hit tonight, nor do we know the location of the Mayor, who will have gone missing in all the confusion. Structural damage will be found at the proposed location of the Blaidd Drwg Nuclear Power plant and the plans will have to be redrawn.”

“Of course.”

Jack humphed and drank down his liquor. “It had been such a nice day, too.”

River placed Barney in his playpen next to her desk and started writing the necessary reports that Torchwood 1 would request.

 

**Cardiff, Earth - March 2007**

River compulsively stared at Barnabus in his play pen. He was curled asleep against a stuffed bear nearly as big as he was. The numbers counting down under the skin of her wrist ticked away. Nine months for the pregnancy left 4 years and three months with her son. The tears came and were painfully suppressed, too many times holding back tears as a child and now her body didn’t remember how to have a good wail.

She picked up her son, and carefully bundled him in warm clothes, soothing him whenever he showed signs of fussing. “I love you so much; I need you to remember that. I wish I could say your life will always be easy and safe, but now is not the time for lies. One day, I will find you, I promise. You will know why I did this. One day we will be a family. But for now, you be a good boy, you live well, find someone who makes it all worthwhile, and make me proud.”

 

**Shadow, Church-ship _Justinian_**

Behind one of the moons, cloaked from planetary sensors, the Church-ship _Justinian_ scanned the reddish planet _Shadow_. Cardinal Kovarian stared out her window at the starscape. Disgust and fear filled her one-eyed stare. She seethed with frustration at the knowledge that at this moment the Doctor _still_ held the Great Alliance in a stalemate over the planet Trenzalore, despite her best efforts.

She had been stymied again and again. First, the Doctor had weaponized the entire population of Earth, hypnotizing billions and billions of civilians who never remembered the murdering of her allies; their corpses left to rot wherever they fell across the vast human empire. Then her hand-picked, personally trained psychopath had fallen in love with the blasted man instead of killing him off. The Doctor had faked his death after that.

Kovarian’s tablet behind her bleeped. She turned to face her desk. The scans she had ordered were completed. On her tablet scrolled condensed temporal information about the planet her ship observed. _Shadow_ would be a fully seeded level 7 planet, average population 4 billion. A high concentration of the inhabitants would have Time Lord trioxyribonucleicacid, much diluted though it was from the generations since its primary source. TNA was always dominant, though; the people down there would read the fluctuations of time, and regenerate upon death.

Kovarian slammed the tablet onto the desk. Damn that man, that _Doctor_. How dare he bring them back the long way----with _sex_. How many women had he bedded for how many years to get a population this large?

She took a deep breath, let the ship’s automatically-released relaxation gas sooth her troubled mind. _Justinian_ was a cutting-edge Church-ship designed to keep its clerics and subjects calm and in tune with the Faith at all times. They did this with atmospheric control systems: scheduled gaseous prostration and faith sensors which released soothing gas at the first sign of agitation or subversion.

She didn’t have the forces to eradicate a level 7 population. However, she could make sure it never happened. It would be impossible to block the Doctor at every opportunity for _recreation_ , but perhaps she could stop him from ever starting that monumental task.

Another Great Alliance would be necessary. While the First Great Alliance sieged Trenzalore and kept Gallifrey at bay, this Alliance would be dedicated to containing the Doctor, sealing away his… _influence_ for all eternity.

She spoke into the ship’s intercom, “Hail the leader of the nearest Sontaran battle fleet.” The Sontarans would be the easiest to persuade into an alliance against the Doctor. The others: the Daleks, and Cybermen, Sycorax and Autons, Chelonians and Teriliptils; they would all be much harder to convince to work together.

 

**Cardiff, Earth - August, 2007**

For a moment, River considered not returning to Torchwood. But, no. She told Jack she was coming back. She had things to do.

The door to the Bay Tourist Office had a fresh coat of paint on it. The lights were on, and the window showed leaflets and posters for kitschy locations spread throughout Cardiff. When she opened the door, a little bell rang above her head.

“Just a moment,” a Welsh voice rang out. A moment later, a man in a smart three piece suit walked through a beaded curtain towards the desk.

“Miss Song, have you returned from your trip?” He typed on the computer in the corner.

“River!” Jack bounded through the curtain. “Hey, you! Meet Ianto Jones, he looks sexy in a suit.”

“Careful sir,” Ianto chided, “that’s harassment.”

“And hopefully, not the only reason you hired him,” River added.

“I saved him from a pterodactyl,” Ianto explained, with a too-bright smile.

“And I missed it? Shame.”

The door to the secret entrance opened and Jack escorted River through. He sniffed the air around her, “Not that I’m not happy you’re back, just I wasn’t expecting you so soon.”

“I’ve been gone nearly five months.”

He glanced at the counter showing through her wrist and said, “Only on my side. Jeez, did you just jump from then to now?”

“I needed the time on this end.” She couldn’t spend all her days with Barnabus as a child, she needed to lock in her son’s life, fix it with a good version of events before it was too late, like it had been for her and her mother. Splitting the time this way made sense. She could dedicate the next two years to meeting and interacting with her son, wherever—whoever—he was. She could lock in his past twenty four years, make them immutable. Give him the chance for a childhood she never had.

“—worldwide invasion of Daleks and Cybermen—” Jack’s voice broke through her reverie.

“What?!” she exclaimed, baffled.

“You missed a lot,” Jack said flatly.

 

**Stonehenge, Earth - 50 A.D**

Kovarian looked over the large cube in the center of the stone auditorium. The box was equipped with the latest in psychic dampening. A reengineered temporal compression field from the Two Streams Quarantine Facility in Apalapucia stretched the subject’s life indefinitely. There’d be no dying and using suppressed regeneration energy to destroy the box if the subject never died. Her eyes fell on the circular locks etched on the sides of the cube.

“These markings, what language is it? What does it say?” she asked the group of engineers waiting for her approval.

“It’s Gibberish ma’am, we used a Voynich translation.” The senior engineer said. His name patch said ‘Clemford’. “It doesn’t say anything.”

Kovarian approved. A Voynich translation: even a Timelord would have difficulty with that. By the time the Doctor realized it said nothing, it would be too late.

She smiled. How fortuitous that the companion Amy Pond would be useful to her plans once again. The Autons had a psychic scanner, Miss Pond would create the scenario of the Doctor’s undoing and the Doctor would be along for the ride. Locked away in this box, the Doctor could never spawn a planet of Time Lords and never release Gallifrey at Trenzalore.

Kovarian turned to her squad of Confessors. “Spread the legend to every corner of space and time,” she told them. “ _When the Pandorica opens, silence will fall_.”


	3. Chapter 3

_If you remember nothing else in this book, remember this: time can be rewritten, but not once it’s been read._

_\--Yeah, but who does the reading, Yan? Obviously it’s not the people involved or the Doctor would never be able to change anything. Maybe it’s the Doctor himself and anything he doesn’t know about doesn’t exist. Which means the universe is Schrödinger’s cat_.

_\--Jack, this is a serious work, please._

_\--Sorry, dear._ \--Excerpt from: Time Travel for Dummies by The Archivist, original manuscript with alterations preserved in the Delirium Archive upon Papal Request.

 

**Cardiff, Earth - August, 2007**

Strictly speaking River shouldn’t be using the mainframe for this. But then, Owen shouldn’t use it for his porn, nor Tosh for her downloading. It was a delicate thing she was doing, searching hospital records from 1986. She found an entry for an abandoned toddler registered at the Royal Hope Training hospital in December of that year. There was a photo attached, it showed a grainy, overlit Barnabus, his face splotchy with tears.

The adoption trail began with an orphanage. He was there for three months before being taken in by a lovely family: a mum, a dad, and a sister. The adoption was finalized after six months and he stayed with them. She stopped scrolling at the name they gave him. Oh. That couldn’t be a coincidence; the universe was rarely so lazy. She brought up the man’s permanent record and printed one copy before deleting the search history.

Around her, work continued. In his office, Jack and Suzie worked through documentation. At her multi-monitor array, Tosh coordinated the Mainframe activity. Without a body to examine, Owen stood at the arcade cabinet, the 8-bit bleeps and bloops sounding his advancement through the game levels. Ianto moved about with a bin liner in hand cleaning the detritus from the coffee table and kitchen.

The printout shook in her grasp. She took a marker, and blacked out all the identifying information. She folded the papers crisply and placed them between the pages of her diary. One day, she would read it, or more likely, have it read to her by someone she could ret-con, but not today.

 

**Cardiff, Earth - October, 2007**

River watched as Jack bounced to his office to retrieve his greatcoat. Gwen Cooper stood near the waterfall, her bravado gone now she’d actually breached Torchwood and seen the weevils.

“Jack, I need a minute with her.” River called to him. Here was a perfect opportunity; she knew what Jack would do with Gwen once he’d finished talking with her. By tomorrow, all this would be not even a dream.

“What do you need _me_ for?” Gwen asked.

River retrieved the well-hidden sheaf of papers from her diary. “I need you to read something.” She handed the papers to Gwen.

“Um, Adoption records—”

“No, not outloud. Just read it.” Jack stared out at her from his office window. River knew he knew what she was doing. Owen and Tosh however, stared at them in confusion.

When Gwen finished, River asked, “In your opinion, did he have a good life?”

Gwen looked back the papers. “Well, there was his time at—.”

“--No specifics, _please_.”

Gwen seemed stumped for a moment, then said, “there were ups and one very bad down. Better than most, I’d say.”

“Thank you.” River took back her documents and headed down to the secure archives. Now that she knew his life wasn’t so terrible, she knew she could read it, and _fix_ it forever. Behind her, she heard Jack commanding the others, “OK, Tosh, finish that calibration tomorrow morning, oh and first thing, get a hold of Chanla and Bell because I think they’re lying. Ianto, if she needs back up you better be on standby…”

::-::

Less than a day later, Jack’s team was one member short, Suzie having killed herself. Gwen had been sent home, told to take the day and make absolutely sure she wanted to work for Torchwood. If not, there was another retcon pill destined for her drink.

Ianto sprayed a pressure washer at the paving stones where Suzie’s blood had dried in a brown pool. By morning, there would be no sign to the tourists than anything terrible had happened this night.

“A fucking waste,” Owen commented, zipping up the body bag. He paused and stared at Suzie’s grey face. “Sorry, luv,” he murmured as he zipped the bag over her head. He and River hauled the body into the back of the Torchwood SUV. They’d drive it through the hidden access tunnel under the Millennium Centre. It wouldn’t do for anyone to see them carrying a body through the Tourist entrance.

When River returned, she found Ianto stood still, spraying the same spot, staring off into the night sky. “Hey,” she broke his reverie, “I can finish this, if…”

“…this kills us all in the end…” Ianto shook his head. “Sorry ma’am, what did you say?”

“Take the rest of the day off, I’ve got this,” River told him, taking the spray hose. “I’ll do Suzie’s final log-out procedures.”

Ianto looked as though he was going to protest, then sighed in a slump, and said, “Yes, ma’am.”

::-::

River spent the day boxing up Suzie’s workstation and making sure the artifacts Ianto had named the Life Knife and Risen Mitten--two bits of technology that should never be used--were locked away in Jack’s vault. The rest of Torchwood had left for home hours ago (returning their purloined artifacts in Tosh and Owen’s case), so Jack had cracked open the seal of the 4652 vintage of Chateau D’Eath Malbec that had recently fallen through the rift. Not the best year, too sour, but still perfectly safe, and no great loss to drink it. A new magnum would be appearing in the cellar as it did every 38.47 days like clockwork. No one had yet figured out how or why they kept arriving, but they’d been doing so for the last three years, and who was Torchwood to turn down free booze.

“She’s a bit…” he trailed off and he made a swishy gesture with his hand, as though that could encompass everything Gwen Cooper was.

River looked at him over her glass. He fidgeted under her glare.

“I don’t need a second, I have you.” He shielded himself with this fact.

She nodded, “for a little while, and then…”

“I _know_.” Jack stared intently in the direction of his coral, not really seeing it. “Whatever trouble you’re in…I still have friends in the Agency. I could help. Those recall implants are _notoriously_ unreliable, or so I’ve heard.”

“I’ve never told you my story, have I?”

“You’ve never had to.”

“Hmm. I think I do, now.”

Even though the two of them were alone, Jack still stood and closed his door.

She gulped down the rest of the liquid in her glass and composed herself. “I’m on leave from Stormcage.”

“Gods.” The implications flashed through his mind and he fell back into his chair. “I trusted you, you’re my _second!_ ”

“Please don’t act like I’m the only murderer you’re still friends with.”

“After a few years in rehab, sure…but _Stormcage_?” Any joviality in Jack’s eyes vanished. “What did you do?”

“I was convicted of killing my husband.” River’s voice was steady, level. This was not a lie.

“That would _not_ get you a place in the most _secure_ _prison_ in all of time and space! It’s for the most obscene crimes imaginable….”

River smiled without mirth. “My husband is a very special man.”

“Is?” Jack latched onto the present tense like a lifeline. “You’re innocent?”

“Time travel dear. I married him after I killed him.”

“What…”

“Really, it’s between me and him, and he doesn’t mind.”

Jack stared at her. “He knows, and he married you anyways?”

She smiled in reminiscing. “It _is_ how he got me to kill him.”

“He wanted you to…”

“Oh yes. He was very adamant. Fixed point you know.”

Jack sense of anger and betrayal deflated. “You could have led with that.” A fixed point? No choice then. Poor bugger.

 

**Church-ship _Justinian_**

The ruddy planet mocked her with its existence. Kovarian watched the simulated 3-D rendering of _Shadow_ as it hung with its two moons. The _Justinian_ was currently hovering on the dark side of the largest moon, _Huginn_.

The Pandorica had failed. Reports from Stonehenge were sketchy. The Observer-Clerics all agreed the trap _had_ sprung; the Doctor _had_ been imprisoned in the box. Yet, something had happened. The Pandorica had disappeared. The Alliance had reverted to parallel temporal positions, as though they’d never heard the summons and had carried on with their previous activities. The Universal Clock was misaligned throughout the Mutter Spiral. None of the Scientist-Clerics could make sense of the readings. She’d had to pledge those two squadrons to the service of the Headless Monks to prevent gossip. It wouldn’t do for her Chapter to experience confusion in the face of the Doctor’s threat.

Now the Doctor was wise to a threat surrounding him. He would be on his guard, always aware of the phrase “ _silence will fall_.” It had been boastful of her to use such phraseology, true; an error that would require finesse in all future efforts.

She tapped the command that would summon a troop commander to her office. In the time it took him to arrive, she hacked into the planetary database, and mined for origin records. If she couldn’t stop the Doctor from procreating, she could prevent the formation of a gathering place for his various spawn.

Records showed that a million years ago in Shadow’s history, the planet was created by a small family: The Abomination, his mate and their daughter.

The troop commander entered and saluted. She pointed to him the image of the Founding Family. “Go back as far as possible, find a way to remove this one from history.” She indicated the smiling figure whose shoulders the Abomination held tightly. Unfortunately, nothing could be done about the Abomination, no matter how many times he died he came back, and containment only worked for so long. He was worse than a Time Lord; at least with enough firepower they stayed dead.

The troop commander nodded and left.

Sometime later, he returned with a temporal attack plan which required no Clerical sacrifice. Inwardly, she was quite impressed at this Commander’s ingenuity. Obviously the chatter surrounding Colonel Run-Away had inspired the troops to greater endeavors.

“Oh, this is perfect!” she crowed in satisfaction as she read the details of the plan. Her Scientist-Clerics could exploit a weakness in the timeline around 2007 and implant a parasitic timeline which folded back across five decades to obscure any trace of tampering.

The Doctor had programmed the entire human race to slaughter her Confessors on sight. Now she would use humanity to destroy any possibility of Time Lord descendants.

 

**Torchwood Hub, Earth - January 2008**

River’s day had not gone well. It had started with a trace rift reading in the Himalayas – a trap from the Master she deftly avoided, though not without arguments from Owen -- continued with a BBC News 24 bulletin describing Jack Harkness, Martha Jones and The Doctor as terrorists, and had gone downhill from there. A charged world was preparing for First Contact with an alien race (the Toclafane), she had a headache from constantly fighting off psychic messaging from the Archangel Satellite system, and the Prime Minister was The Master in disguise and she was the only one who knew it.

Owen and Toshiko were watching the live BBC pre-show broadcast in the autopsy bay. Tosh had it projected against the large far wall. She was also putting the finishing touches on a virus that would infiltrate the internet and remove any trace of the terror bulletin from various foreign nations’ computer systems; it wouldn’t do to have the Americans butting in on England’s extraterrestrial affairs. Gwen had begged the day off and was watching the broadcast with her fiancé Rhys, at their home—no doubt trying to reconnect with Rhys after her affair with Owen.

Right now, River was fielding off the fifth telephone call from UNIT concerning the terrorist bulletin.

“No, it’s not true. The Doctor has always loved Earth. It’s a smear campaign, I promise you.” It both amazed her and disgusted her that the higher-ups in UNIT were so quick to persecute the Doctor. They had been young soldiers when the Doctor lived and worked on Earth in the 70s and 80s. They knew first hand just how hard he had worked to keep the planet safe. But, she couldn’t blame them; it was the psychic satellites that had them in an agitation. Still, she only had to endure this situation for another day or so. By tomorrow, UNIT would once again be loving the Doctor, and the Master would be briefly dead.

::-::

“ _…and in just 30 seconds time we will be going live to First Contact. It’s been announced that Prime Minister Saxon has invited President Winters to take the first address_ ,” the blonde BBC announcer proclaimed.

“Come on, River it’s starting! Oy, tea-boy, you’re gonna miss it!” Owen shouted from his seat. He sat at his desk, facing outwards towards the autopsy bay, popcorn bucket in hand.

River left Jack’s office and stood against the arched entryway. Ianto walked up and stood next to Tosh at the far railing.

The BBC news logo segued to live footage from aboard the Valiant airship, where First Contact would occur. There, President Winters spoke with calm authority, “ _My fellow Americans, patriots, people of the world: I stand before you today as ambassador to humanity…what is important is not that we gain material benefits but that we learn to see ourselves anew…. we know we are not alone, no longer unique in the universe_ ….”

Owen threw a popcorn at the wall, “my god, he can drone on.”

Tosh turned to him. “You have no poetry in your soul,” she complained.

“Oh, I got plenty of poetry, ‘ _there once was a man from Nantucket’…_ ”

“When history asks, ‘where were you on First Contact?’” Ianto interrupted Owen’s recital, “I can answer, ‘watching Owen being lewd’.”

River watched Owen throw a handful of popcorn at Ianto’s head, most of it missing and landing short on top of Tosh’s hair.

“Owen!” She shook out the kernels, throwing some back at him.

River let them have their little scuffle.

In the recording, Winters continued to speak, “ _I ask of the human race, to join with me in welcoming them. My friends, I give you the Toclafane…_.” The camera footage switched to a wide angle, and four metallic, spikey balls materialized around his head, where he stood on the staircase platform.

River walked away, unnoticed by the others who were captivated by these events. She knew what was coming; she didn’t have to watch it. In Jack’s office, she sat, staring out, waiting for the shuddering of the timeline that was a few minutes away.

“What the hell, they look like disco balls!” Owen complained. “Not like any aliens we’ve encountered. I’ll give them a Weevil, that’d be impressive.”

“Perhaps it’s some sort of remote contact unit,” Tosh offered, “or an encounter suit.”

She heard the Toclafane continue, “ _This man is stupid. Master is our friend. Where’s my master? Pretty please?_ ”

Harold Saxon shouted, “ _oh, all right then_.” The camera swiveled to focus on the Prime Minister who spread his arms wide. “ _Taadaa. Sorry, sorry, I have this effect, people just get obsessed. Is it the smile? Is it the aftershave? Is it the capacity to laugh at myself? I don’t know, it’s crazy!”_

“ _Saxon, what are you talking about?_ ” Winters asked.

Saxon turned to look at him. “ _I’m taking control Uncle Sam. Starting with you: Kill him!_ ”

One of the Toclafane zoomed in front of Winters and shot out a bolt of laser light which disintegrated him.

The three Torchwood employees flinched. “Oh my god!” Tosh screeched.

 “Hey!” Owen shouted. “What the hell?”

River felt more than saw the timeline fuzzing. She knew it was the year rewinding, but to her it felt like the Earth had stopped spinning for a second, leaving her head stuffed with a dizziness and her body continuing a spin. She nearly fell out of her chair. Her mind sensed the timeline screeching, tangling. It stung her eyes and deafened her ears; so much stronger than she thought it would be.

The signal fuzzed with interference. The footage resolved into a close-up of Harold Saxon’s madly grinning face. “ _Now then, peoples of the Earth, please attend carefully…”_ The recording cut out to a BBC test card and tone.

“Hey!” Owen shouted. “What the hell?”

The Doctor fixed it, River wanted to answer, but didn’t. Once, long ago, the Doctor had told her about the year that never was. It was what warned her about the subtle programming being sent through the Archangel satellites; her bespoke brainwashing giving her the strength to resist the Vote Saxon propaganda.

“Hey!” Toshiko shouted. “Who are you?”

River turned to look. There was a silent in the autopsy bay, staring up at Ianto, and Toshiko. It’s head tilted with a screeching hiss and it reached out towards Ianto.

Keeping her eyes fixed on it, she retrieved Jack’s spare webley from his drawer. She shot the creature in the head and hid the gun from sight.

When her fellow employees turned to look at her, they forgot the Silent was there.

“The Toclafane were trying to invade,” River explained. “They’ve been stopped. Nothing needs doing; UNIT will have it all under control for the foreseeable future. Go home, enjoy the quiet. Trust me, everything will be fine.”

While they gathered their things, they would sometimes catch sight of the dead silent, and every time, they would remember they had seen it and turn to ask River, at which time they would forget.

River would have found it hilarious if it wasn’t so serious.

 

**Carmarthen, January - 2009**

Gunshots echoed through the shopping center carpark.

River ran up the stairs to the third floor, where she knew Ianto to be. She cursed the rift, she cursed whatever the rift may have brought, she cursed the team for needing hours to get to where she and Ianto already were on a day trip, she even cursed the Doctor for old time’s sake. Damn man never had liked the day-to-day life.

“Ianto!” she called out through her comms earpiece. The shots had come from his location.

“Hmm?” Ianto replied calmly. “You secure your level, then? Did you find anything? I’m starting to think this is a wild goose chase and Owen was just messing about with the sensors.”

River paused in her ascent. “Are you alright?”

“I’m-oh my god!” River heard three more shots loudly through her earpiece and echoed muffled through the concrete hallway.

“Ianto!” She ran up. Upon reaching the access door, she composed herself, assumed a tactical weapons position and kicked open the door. She swung back against the wall. Nothing attacked her or shot at the open door.

The third level of the carpark looked identical to the other levels: concrete walls and weight-bearing pylons evenly spaced. This early in the morning, the only cars in the entire carpark were those belonging to the people who were too drunk and too responsible to drive themselves home from the bars. This level was bare.

She cleared the stairwell, and found Ianto stood still two empty rows over, staring puzzled at his gun. There was nothing and no one around for him to be shooting at. “Why did you start shooting?”

Ianto looked to her confused. “I don’t know.”

She holstered her gun.

“Your wrist,” he pointed.

The top of her right arm and wrist had welts scratched into the skin; exactly where she’d scratch with her left-hand nails if she had to keep her gun hand out. There were five short raised lines, four of them crossed with a fifth diagonal.

“Damn.” River slowly turned in a circle. At about eighty degrees to the right was a dead silent lying in a pool of brackish blood. It was shot through the head.

“River, what are you looking -- oh my!” Ianto stared at the alien he’d killed. “How did I forget that?”

“It’s what they do,” River answered. Keeping the alien in view in front of her, she approached till it was at the bottom of her vision, then rotated in a circle around the body looking out. There were five more dead silents in various areas of the carpark. “Oh this clean-up is gonna be _fun_.”

“Clean up? Did you find anything?”

“Ianto, look over here.”

“What -- oh my! How did I forget that?”

**Oort Cloud, Solar System - 1965**

The ship known in some languages as _Rogue Seven_ paused at the outer-most boundary of Earth’s solar system. This far out, telescopic images of the only inhabited planet were a year old. Even with such old data, the captain had a hunch that this would be a good trading post. Scans showed that the inhabitants were susceptible to all sorts of diseases which the _Rogue_ had cures for, and the pathogens for.

Two of the captain’s heads studied the infographic on his screen. The third planet from the sun was rich in chemical carriers. Surely, the progenitors would be willing to part with a few, since they were so many.

The captain’s third head read over the anonymous hail. This system was so far off the trading routes, he never would have bothered with a scan if it hadn’t been for the message. If the information contained within the hail was accurate, the biology of the inhabitants was such that the _Rogue Seven_ could keep the chemical carriers alive indefinitely.

The captain browsed his medical catalogue. Best to hit them hard, make them grateful for a possible cure. One of the influenzas, perhaps.

This would be a very good trade.

 

**Cardiff, Earth - June 2009**

“Jack,” River tried. Her recall implant showed mere days left on the counter.

“No.”

“I’d stay if I could, you know I would.”

Jack stroked the picture of Owen and Tosh he’d rescued from the deceased-employee archive box. “Get out.”

“Jack.”

“Just go.” Jack threw his tumbler against the door frame. The glass shattered, spraying River with whiskey droplets.

River left his office, stopping at Ianto, who sat on the couch staring at Tosh’s workstation. She sat next to him.

“Shall I initiate final log-out procedures on your employee file after you’ve gone, ma’am?” Ianto asked stiffly.

River nodded. “That’s probably best. I doubt I’ll be allowed to return.”

**Cardiff, Earth - August 2009**

Ianto stared at the computer screen in what used to be Tosh’s workstation:

 _Final log out procedure_  
RIVER SONG  
Are you sure you want to continue?  
Yes    No

Just a week ago, River had been sat with him, Jack and Gwen, having a final group dinner. The conversation had been strained. The ghosts of Tosh and Owen were still too fresh for any levity.

On her last day, River had asked to sit with Ianto in the Archives. She had watched him cataloging artifacts the entire morning as her minutes dwindled to zero.

“You’re an amazing man, Ianto Jones,” she had told him. “I’m glad to have known you.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” he had answered.

“You and Jack are good together.”

“I’m sorry?”

The timer in her wrist had flashed a red color, and her mouth hung open as though she had more to say, but she had just smiled and faded away.

 _Final log out procedure_  
RIVER SONG  
Are you sure you want to continue?  
Yes    No

Ianto selected ‘yes’ and watched as the mainframe archived River’s employee file.

 

**Stormcage**

River faded into view in the medbay of Stormcage. The hand bot approached, “You have been gone for five minutes local, and five years subjective. Please stand still for a scan.” It scanned her with a wave of its hand.

The perspex doors slid open and the new warden from before walked in. “Well, how is she?”

“Scans are typical for exposure to early 21st century Earth,” the bot replied as it removed the subcutaneous recall implant. “She will need a lung rinse for the high concentration of hydrocarbon buildup.”

The warden tsked, “let’s schedule that for tomorrow.” The bot bleeped in confirmation. “If there’s nothing else?”

“No.”

The warden led River out of the Medbay and down the hall. They stopped some distance away and the warden let his fingers slide into River’s hand. He held it loosely, familiarly, staring at the place on her wrist where the implant’s numbers used to count down. “When I was a baby, I used to wonder what they meant. I grew up and forgot, for years I didn’t remember…You named me Barnabus, what kind of a name is that?”

River stared for a moment.  “It was an idea your father once had.”

Barnabus’s face brightened with a huge smile.

She caressed his face, “you’ve regenerated.”

He nodded, “a few times.”

 

**Church-ship _Justinian_**

Kovarian stood before a squadron of Confessors. Rows of grey faces stared at her, click-hissing. She didn’t show it, but it was unsettling, how they showed no expression. She couldn’t tell if this squadron had been corrupted like the last. She’d only discovered their activities when death notifications arrived from the early 21st century. Unauthorized, they had been spying on her activities, reporting back to Tasha Lem. They were sloppy, and were killed by locals before she could recover their memory-streams to see what they were after.

Still, her troops were not infinite, and if she had any hope of succeeding she had to use these creatures. She did not have to like it.

“A group of you will embed with the local government, 1965. Influence them. Make sure they want the cure. _The price is reasonable, no one will miss them_. The rest of you will embed in 2009, influence the government again. This time, prepare a cover-up. The locals can’t know what happened. _It would be bad for the election_.” Grey heads tilted and click-hissed in agreement.

Her data clerics had assured her that those two specific ideas would proliferate in the local government. Germinate until it was too late. They showed her sequence-plots of outcomes. Every eventuality was the same. The Abomination would leave Earth, and his mate would die before they could ever propagate and colonize _Shadow_.

 

**London - September 7th 2009**

At 8:40 in the morning GMT, every single child in the world, stopped.

Mr. Frobisher sat in his office, staring at the reports presented by Colonel Oduya. Every single child, no matter what they were doing, or where they were, stopped moving and remained still for the same length of time. Across the world. Why couldn’t it have been something simple? _A rogue asteroid, a shadow on the moon._

He caught himself idly staring at the model of the Parliament clock tower on his desk. Oh god, his children must have stopped too. His wife never called to tell him?

Only four people still alive knew what happened that day in 1965, with the children. Now it was happening again. Their actions were coming back to haunt them. The vents unit blew a burst of air across his desk with a screech-hiss. _They can never find out, it would be bad for the election._

Finesse could be used for Colonel Michael Sanders, Ellen Hunt and Captain Andrew Staines. But how to kill a fact like Captain Jack Harkness?

The clock tower hands were moving--the minute hand imperceptibly, the hour even slower. But it was just a model. There were no mechanisms, no batteries…. He picked it up….

 _It’s why I left you behind. It’s not easy, even just looking at you, Jack, cuz you’re wrong. You’re a fixed point in time and space, you’re a fact…_ a memory curled through Mr. Frobisher’s brain.

A knock at the door startled Mr. Frobisher and he dropped the model onto his desk.

A fact? No, a man. Right. Captain Jack was just a man…

 

**Torchwood**

Ianto ducked behind the fountain as the last seconds ticked away. Hopefully its nature as a transmitter would provide some protection against the blast. He’d barely tucked up at its base when the world shuddered and exploded. The night sky lit up with fire and dust and the fountain blew apart, showering him with debris and pylons. Eventually everything settled with creaking and groaning and Ianto was able to take in the ruined remains of the Plass.

Fire and concrete were thrown everywhere. The entire Quay was gone and Ianto could see into the crater, levels below where the Torchwood Hub used to be. He made his way out of the rubble, not knowing how or why anyone would want to blow up Jack—no, blow up Torchwood, the bombs placement meant they wanted Torchwood gone, too. Which meant neither he nor Gwen were safe.

With that thought, a bullet pinged off the remains of a metal strut near his head. Ianto looked up and saw a red laser light boring through the dust in the air. He ran as shots came at him from the various buildings around him.

Ianto ran, bullets at his heels, until he was sure he had lost his sniper tail. Once he was in the dark, safe, he stopped and planned.

If they blew up Mermaid Quay just to get Torchwood, none of their families were safe either. His sister Rhiannon, her husband, her children. He had to get to them.

::-::

Three days later, Ianto was dying. Of all the ways Ianto thought his life would end: cybermen, cannibals, weevils... poisoned trying save children wasn’t the worst way. On the one hand, he considered, dying was easy. All he had to do was breathe and his body would do the rest. On the other hand, it was the hardest thing ever. He looked at Jack; Jack who was dying too. Except Jack would wake up with a dead Ianto, and Ianto wouldn’t wake up at all.

 _“You said you would fight,”_ the 456 whispered.

“Then I take it back,” Jack screamed. “I take it all back, but not him.” Ianto often wondered what he was worth to Jack, now it seemed he had an answer: the lives of 35 million children. Ianto lost his balance and felt Jack catch him. Through the grey filling his vision and the buzzing in his ears, Ianto could hear Jack pleading. “No, no, no Ianto no no no no no.”

 

**Church-ship _Justinian_**

Kovarian sat watching the archival security footage, secured from her agents on site. One screen showed footage of people pounding at sealed doors as they died, piling atop each other. A second screen showed The Abomination cradling his dying lover on the floor of the ancient Thames House. She sneered at the man’s sniveling. How many lovers had that man had in his absurdly long life? They died, that’s what people did. _“Ianto, Ianto, stay with me, stay with me please. Stay with me.”_ Begging wouldn’t change that.

How much more of this footage was there? She had to watch to the end, to be sure. So many of her previous plans had been derailed by the Doctor, she wanted to fix this series of events, to preclude temporal interference.

_“You’ll forget me.”_

_“Never could.”_

_“A thousand years’ time? You won’t remember me.”_

_“Yes I will, I promise I will.”_ Kovarian’s screen blinked an alert showing the cessation of life signs. _“Ianto, Ianto, don’t go. Don’t leave me, please, don’t.”_ The Abomination kissed his lover and then lay next to him. A second alert blinked: another termination of life.

Kovarian exited the video. _Good._


	4. Chapter 4

_\---“I love this place. Used to come here with my mam, they showed kids’ films on a Sunday morning.” –_ Ianto Jones, about the Electro Cinema.

 _Careful note should be made of the fact that Ancient Cardiff historical documents show the Electro Cinema was closed down for the years 1977-2009. Ancient Cardiff birth records will show Ianto Jones being born in 1983. All dates are First Earth Reference._ – Excerpt from A History of the Founding Family by Civilian-Arkytior

**Greater Magellanic Causeway - 548-743**

On a small planet, on a rainy island, a woman is giving birth. She is utterly alone, which is how she wants it to be. It’s for the best really. No one can know about this baby. Not even the father. _Especially_ not the father. The nurse-bot who assists is vaporized into atoms afterwards.

 

**Magellan’s Place**

Jack looked down at his drink. He’d be needing a refill soon. He watched as a drunken Adipose waddled across the bar top and fell off with a “wheee”. A quick glance down showed the Adipose landing with a “squeak”. _Eh_ , a bar this close to the trade routes would accept all sorts as long as they had the money. Behind him, he could hear the bubbling speech of a Hath and in the far corner a Judoon was using single syllables to complain about the latest software update to his translation unit. Through the window, he could see the Milky Way galaxy, tilted obliquely, larger and brighter than anything else in the sky.

Answering a swipe on the bar-sensor, the bartender returned to Jack and refilled his whiskey. He also slipped a folded note under the glass, “from the gentlemen over there.”

Jack looked up and saw the Doctor staring at him from across the bar. “Go on, read it,” his expression seemed to say. He unfolded the paper. Inside were four words: _His name is Alonso_. Looking up, he saw the Doctor gesturing to the navy man sitting down to the bar on Jack’s left.

Before Jack could get a better look at this “Alonso”, a fuzziness overlaid everything, like heat haze over asphalt. Time rippled. With a 51st century upbringing, Time Agency training, Tardis-induced immortality, and centuries of working at Torchwood, there was no way Jack could miss the way reality stuttered, halted, and resumed. If time were a film, quite a few frames would have been gone missing. Everything jolted to temporal positions seconds ahead of where they were exactly one second ago.

No one else seemed to notice, not even the Doctor who saluted and left.

Jack felt causality changing. His mind tingled as memories altered, adding events and deleting others. He tried to hold onto the old memories, but they were swept away before he could remember why he needed to remember them. The woman to his left rested her head on his shoulder. “Oh god,” she moaned in a cultured Londinium accent.

Jack kissed her head affectionately. Her hair ticked his nose. Jack laughed. “You’re such a lush.”

“It’s not my fault,” she hiccoughed. “It’s this damn body. Why’d I have to be a woman?”

“Well, you make a beautiful woman.”

“Thanks, Jack, but I’m too drunk to get it up right now.”

Jack inputted a demand for water on the table top touchscreen.

“Oh, I am cutting you _off_. You’ve forgotten you don’t have a penis… again.”

She sniffled into her water. “I miss my penis.” She took a sip. “And this… maudlinness. I didn’t used to be a maudlin drunk, no. Pfft. Everything changes. Nothing’s the same. Might as well be a different person.”

“That’s not how it works.”

“Yes it is! Name one thing that’s the same about me from before. Yesterday, I was…”

“...it’s been three months…”

“…And today, I’m not.” She snuggled herself under Jack’s arm. “Out of everything, I think I miss my vowels the most.”

Jack commiserated. “I miss your vowels too. But hey, I hear multiple orgasms are nice.”

“Yeah, they are.”

 

**London, Earth - September 10 th 2009**

In a school gymnasium lay rows of bodies covered with red tarps; the collected dead of Thames House, poisoned by the 4-5-6. Gwen Cooper, formerly of the Cardiff Constabulary, lately of Torchwood, made her way to bodies 13 and 14.

Number 13: Jack Harkness

Number 14: Ianto Jones

Jack woke with a small gasp. Ianto stayed dead. Gwen cried. As were so many of Jack’s tragedies, this moment was a fixed point in time.

“There’s nothing we can do,” she cried.

 

**Tardis - 1 A. G.**

The Doctor took up River’s hands and twirled around the Tardis console. “Gallifrey! River! It worked! Dance with me.” Music began playing through the speakers. The blue glow in the room grew brighter. “Everything is perfect. Can you imagine? All those Time Lords, all those children. They’re all alive!”

They laughed and twirled and danced a dance with random steps and dips. Their path took them up the stairs and down the stairs and back around the console, over and over. On one such circuit, the Doctor bumped into the switches. The monitor fizzed to life with a bio-scan of River on its screen. He stopped and stared at the result.

River wiggled, alarmed, in his grasp. “What is it? That face, calm down! Tell me what’s wrong.” She turned and read the screen. “Oh.”

The program once used to scan Amy had activated. It was flashing with the information that River had once been pregnant.

The Doctor’s mind raced as he stared at her. He could sense how close they were to the end of their time together. There was no way the _prelude_ to that baby hadn’t happened yet. They had done those _things_ quite a few times by now.

“Mine?” He took a step away. It needed to be asked. The two of them had never pretended to be exclusive.

If she were anyone other than River Song, her body language would be a cower under his scrutiny, but it was too fatalistic for that. She was not scared _of_ him, she was scared _for_ him. “Yes. We have a son.”

“You had no right to keep him from me.” The Doctor was so very angry. He could feel it bubbling through his mind. “Where is he?”

“Earth.”

“When?”

“Early two thousands.”

The Doctor glowered at her, even as he began to pilot the Tardis.

“You can’t,” she protested.

“Do not tell me what I can and cannot do, Ri-ver!” He punctuated with vicious button toggling.

River found herself cursing their tangled existence. “He’s already grown. It’s too late, I’ve lived it.” The next words out of her mouth were going to be so painful for him. “You were never there.”

The Doctor’s hands stilled and his head hung low. “You know what this did to Amy. Why would you do it to me?”

“Better he lives a human life. You think Kovarian and the Silence aren’t still out there? Now your own people?” She flung an arm towards the Tardis doors as if to indicate all those Time Lords. “They had legends of the hybrid. If I had told _anyone_ …and then I jumped ahead, making sure he grew up safe.”

“And now you’ve gone, is he still safe? How long did you wait before leaving, how many years did you give him for a _safe_ _human_ life?”

River looked away from the pain on the Doctor’s face. “Twenty-six.”

“Twenty-six? Just a baby!” He twisted the zig-zag plotter, and the Tardis powered herself down. “NO!” He slammed the console. “Don’t do this! Why won’t you _go_!?” He kicked the underside of the console.

“It’s fixed!” River explained, “I fixed his life up to the point I left!”

“No no no!” But when the Tardis refused to respond, the Doctor collapsed back against the railing. He stood there for a moment, just breathing. “What’s he like?” he asked, once he had calmed himself.

“He’s brilliant.”

“Of course he is... Take me to him, please.”

 

**London, Earth - September 10 th 2009**

Jack woke with a small gasp. Ianto stayed dead. Gwen cried. As were so many of Jack’s tragedies, this moment was a fixed point in time.

 _This_ moment.

A moment _later_ , a groaning whooshing noise interrupted their pain. The kind of noise the universe would make if you bent it in half and rubbed it against itself.

The TARDIS materialized against the wall behind them.

The Doctor and River walked out. River stayed back against the Tardis doors.

“How long has it been?” The Doctor didn’t wait for an answer, just rushed over and kneeled on the other side of Ianto’s body. A yellow glow suffused his hands. “What’s his name?”

“Ianto Jones,” Jack answered as Gwen watched confusedly. Jack had been alive long enough to know when something miraculous was about to happen. _Just this once_ , he pleaded to the long forgotten household gods that abandoned him as a boy on the Boeshane Peninsula.

The Doctor paused, distracted. “Seriously? Might as well be called John Smith.” He reached for Ianto, rested his hands either side of the man’s face. The Doctor concentrated, and the glow grew.

It looked exactly like regeneration energy, and for a moment, Jack was torn. The universe owed him, all the pain and suffering he’d experienced. But the universe didn’t work like that. _Pleasepleaseplease._

“It’s all right. You can do it, come back.” the Doctor crooned softly. “I know you know how.” The glow penetrated through Ianto’s skin, swirling around them both in ever higher arches. The glowing strands churned and danced through the two of them.

Ianto’s eyes opened, “what’s…”

“Shh, relax. You’re fine. You’re gonna be fine. That’s it.” Slowly, the grey pallor of death receded. Ianto’s skin returned to its healthy pinkish. “Atta boy.” The yellow swirls of energy dissipated. “There we go, all better.” The golden energy faded to nothing, the Doctor looked into Ianto’s wondering eyes. “Hello, there.”

“What did you do?” Gwen asked, not accusatorily. “What was that glow?”

“Imagine jump leads; Ianto had a dead battery. It’s nothing like that, but if that helps then oof.” Jack reached over Ianto and enveloped the Doctor in a hug. “Perhaps you should hug Ianto?”

Jack pulled Ianto up till he was almost sitting in Jack’s lap. “Don’t ever do that again.” Jack rested his head against Ianto’s.

“I’ll try.” Ianto wrapped his arms around Jack. He barely had a moment to enjoy the feeling of warmth and Jack-ness before Jack was pushing him away slightly. “What…” With one hand on Ianto’s back, Jack rested his other hand on the front of Ianto’s chest. The expression on Jack’s face went from elation to confusion to terror to hope and back to terror so fast as he looked inquiringly at the Doctor.

“What have you done to him?”

The Doctor eyes narrowed, his mood shifted. “What have _I_ done to him? What have _you_ done to him? He was here to be _safe_ , and you…embroil him in your _Torchwood,_ ” the word was spat with such vehemence. “Tell me _Jack_ , why are the 4-5-6 so sure you’ll give them the children.”

Before Jack could answer, the Doctor continued. “No, _you_ do not get to talk! Do you know what I _do_ to people who take _children_? You have no idea how lucky you are, right now. If I hadn’t just seen…” Leaving the threat unspoken, the Doctor stood and looked down upon Jack. With all the vehemence and disappointment of the universe, he said, “Do better,” and walked back to the Tardis. Along the way, he pointed viciously at River, who stayed in the gym as the Tardis disappeared without her.

Jack overheard the security personnel’s radios squawking. Someone on the frequency shouted, “ _the 4-5-6 just blew up, what the hell?”_

The radios squealed with feedback, then the Doctor spoke. “ _People involved with the 4-5-6, I’m the Doctor, and I am very very angry. I am so very angry; I am turning over all your records to UNIT. To Stewart and Bambera, I’m trusting you to fix this. I am so very angry, that if I try, bad things will happen to those responsible for this._ ”

“River?” Ianto said from his sprawl on the ground. “Mam? I remember…” Ianto’s face furled in puzzlement, then shook his head dismissively. “Ma’am, are you back?”

“For a little while,” she answered.

 

**UNIT HQ, London - September 11 th 2009**

“Hey!” Jack said, walking in to stand next to Ianto. Ianto sat on the infirmary bed, with his shirt open, listening to his chest with a stethoscope. “So, what’s the verdict?”

“No one can explain how, but they think I’m a Time lord.”

Jack rested his hand against Ianto’s chest. Beneath his fingers he felt the strange double-rhythm of a two-heart system.

“They can’t be sure, of course,” Ianto put aside the instrument, “not without a more invasive examination.”

“What, like exploratory surgery?”

“I believe the word used was ‘vivisection’.”

Jack protectively and carefully buttoned Ianto’s shirt. “I hope you told them where to go.” He left his hands on Ianto’s shoulders, thumbs caressing his collarbones, just feeling his aliveness. He couldn’t get the image of Ianto dying out of his mind. Ianto had _died_ in his arms.

“Ipswich, sir.”

Jack let his head fall onto Ianto’s shoulder. His arms wound under Ianto’s open waistcoat, and around Ianto’s back and he held tight. “You died. You’re not allowed to die. Ever.”

Ianto returned the embrace. “I’ll certainly do my best.”

 

**Cardiff, Earth March - 2010**

Rhys helped his pregnant wife climb up the hill overlooking Cardiff. “Couldn’t have met in a pub?” Gwen teased out to Ianto and Jack who stood enjoying the nighttime view. The lights of the buildings and cars looked like so many multicolored stars on the ground.

“You look good,” Jack offered a grinning Gwen.

“I look huge.”

“She’s bloody gorgeous,” Rhys corrected.

Gwen approached Ianto. “Are _you_ okay?”

Ianto smiled puzzled, “Jack comes back all the time,” he offered, like that was cause to dismiss his own feelings on his resurrection.

“Yeah, but he’s Jack, we’re used to it.”

“Hey!” Jack exclaimed.

“We’ve been around the world, talking to UNIT, sending signals--trying to get a hold of the Doctor, make him come back, but…” Ianto shrugged, the carefree movement looking strange in his large overcoat.

Gwen huffed with mirth. “Your Doctor’s a scary man; he’s got Whitehall all in a twitter. They’ve offered to rebuild the Hub. The public wants Torchwood back--so much for secrecy—they saw what we did, how we tried to help. Don’t know how long that’s going to last, though.”

“Don’t let them!” Jack said sternly.

“Why?” Gwen asked.

“Who’ll run it? You? You’re pregnant. Muggins over there?” he indicated Rhys.

Rhys growled. “I do all right.”

“Fighting aliens is a bit different than running lorries.”

Gwen frowned. “Are you not coming back then?”

“Right now there’s a cold fusion cruiser surfing the ion reefs just at the edge of the solar system.” Jack looked up at the stars. “They’ll give us a ride to the major shipping lanes; there we can find a temporal ship. If the Doctor won’t come to us, we’ll have to go to him. I just need to send a signal.”

She held up a finger, and smiled before removing from her pocket Jack’s wriststrap and the coral Baby Tardis from so long ago. “UNIT found these in the wreckage. Only things left. Indestructible, like their owner.” Jack put the coral in his pocket and secured the strap around his wrist. “Please come back,” she added plaintively.

“Don’t do that. Don’t wait for us to come back. If we do or don’t you need to live your life,” Jack explained.

“Torchwood is my life,” Gwen answered simply.

“It wasn’t always,” Ianto said. “I remember a Gwen who was more concerned with helping people than fighting aliens. The world needs more people like that.”

Jack sent a signal with his wriststrap and held Ianto’s hand against the controls. “You’ll be great, Gwen Cooper,” he said as the two of them faded in a column of light that shot up to the sky.

 

**Cruiser _Proprion_ , Ion Reefs, Sol System **

A squat blue man wearing what looked like a hard-hat led Jack and Ianto from the receiving pad down two corridors and up a flight of stairs. The walls looked like brushed copper, every few feet was a small view hole that showed the stars and nebulae. Whoever owned this ship must have loved it, Ianto thought, because though the walls were browned with age; there was no dirt in the corners, no signs of neglect in the seams of the windows.

“Bathroom’s down the hall. Bridge and engine’s off limits,” the alien said. Ianto felt a cognitive disconnect as he heard a Geordie accent coming from this strange alien. The alien opened the door to their cabin. It was a small room with a double bed and data desk. “Kitchen’s always open, but it’s standard nutrients only,” he added gruffly, then left. When he was further down the hall, Ianto overheard him muttering about not being a “curs-ing welcoming committee.”

The cabin was designed so that the entire back half was bed, with the small desk doing double duty as nightstand. There was hardly any room to stand, none to pace. Jack sat, bouncing, to check the bed. “Sorry about this, best I could do on short notice.”

“It’s fine.” Ianto had found the view ports, a series of holes, each about a foot across, stretching in a line horizontally above the bed. The control was a sliding metallic shutter that irised open. He balanced, kneeling on the mattress, staring out at the multicolored star field. “I’m in space. My god, I’m in SPACE!” The view was more impressive than any seen from Earth’s atmosphere. It wasn’t just a sheet of black with pinpricks, there were streaks of reds and blues and greens all swirled about.

“Yeah, hold on to that feeling for as long as you can.” Jack nodded. “The first time is always special.”

Ianto was quiet for a long time, then: “Out of curiosity, how thick is this glass?”

Jack joined him kneeling at the viewport. “It’s reinforced diamond,” he knocked the window with a knuckle. “Standard on these types of ships, since… forever. It’s never broken, yet.”

“Oh.”

“It’s the seams you have to worry about. If the construction union skimped on the sealant the panel could pop out of its frame when the ship reaches superluminal speeds.”

“Um?”

“I’m kidding, Yan.”

“Very good, sir.”

“Oh ‘sir’? Now, I know I’m in trouble.” Jack snuggled against Ianto’s back.

Ianto twisted around in Jack’s grasp. “Well,” he kissed him, “you are” he kissed him again, “a troublemaker. _Sir._ ”

::-::

It took a week to reach a spaceport on the major shipping lane. In that time, Ianto had looked out at the stars from every view port he could access, had sex with Jack a number of times, discovered what “standard nutrients” meant, met his fellow passengers (a lovely couple with photo albums of all their children—or possibly the same child after a series of moltings), and most incredibly of all: become bored.

Ianto sat at the data desk in his and Jack’s cabin. He scrolled through the holo display shining in white in the air. Most of the menu options were indecipherable to him, being in different languages. Luckily Space Google’s interface was the same; he wondered when exactly they had become an intergalactic search engine. He stared at the search box, his fingers resting on the desk where a laser keyboard hovered above the surface, wondering what to type.

“Are you even going to understand anything you find?” Jack asked from where he lounged on the bed.

“I’m bored. In space. I feel ashamed to be a human,” Ianto lamented.

On a whim, he slowly pecked out I-A-N-T-O—J-O-N-E-S on the strange keyboard layout, and selected “search”.

A biography appeared with a strange woman’s picture, she had dark hair and a long nose above wide lips. The writing was unintelligible symbols. Ianto didn’t have the opportunity to scroll through for anything recognizable before Jack shouted.

“NO!” Jack lunged and swiped out his hand down through the display to minimize it. “Never Google yourself. Especially not out here.”

“Why?”

“It’s the Destiny Trap,” Jack explained. “We learned about it at the Time Agency. It’s where you discover something is going to happen, and you do everything in your power to avoid it. By avoiding it, you _cause_ it. In the end, it happens anyways and you wasted your life trying to avoid it. But if you _never_ learn about it, then there’s a chance it will never happen.”

“That’s a bit…” Ianto bobbed his head.

Jack nodded. “Time travel’s like that.”

 

**London, Earth - 2168**

Susan looked out over the landscape. The half-destroyed buildings smoked and the air was filled with the ash of thousands of Dalek ships. It was dirty and hard to breathe. Still, the humans celebrated. For the first time in decades, they had something to celebrate about. Children crawled out of various boltholes and ran out into the streets and wrestled about, throwing handfuls of ash at each other. The parents followed and stood staring at what was left of the London skyline. They were old enough to remember what it used to look like at the height of humanity.

Next to her, David was looking up at the sky. Hundreds of white contrails crisscrossed the blue. Finally, the relief ships from the Silurian Federacy could come and help.

A few days ago, the resistance radios had crackled with a signal from Dallol, Ethiopia. When the Dalek ships had come, Dallol had become the last free-human city. The extremely hot temperatures caused Dalek technology to malfunction. The Daleks had left the humans there to their own fates, possibly under the erroneous belief they would die out. Those people were the first humans the Silurians asleep under Cwmtaff, Cardiff had made contact with when they awoke after their hundred year’s nap. Now that the skies were free of Dalek spy ships, the Silurians could offer their fleet for rescue services.

“We did it, damn we did it,” David grinned. He grabbed Susan’s hands and he skipped around in a circle, pulling her along. She giggled and fell into his arms.

They had circled towards the other direction and Susan saw one of the Bad Man. It stared at her with its large black eyes. It raised an arm to her and screeched with a gaping hole in its face.

David shouted and shot it with his laser pistol. He turned to her, “are you all right?”

Susan turned to him. “Hmm, I’m fine. Why are you shooting?”

“I don’t know.”

Susan felt a deep pang for her Grandfather. He’d left her here, in this time and place, with David, so she could be loved and be safe. The thought hit her: she had nothing, no more than the clothes on her back, minus one shoe. All of her belongings were still on the Tardis, or with her parents. All she had was the Tardis key on a string round her neck. She didn’t have documentation either. Though Earth’s data infrastructure was such that, once the systems were up and running again, she probably wouldn’t have trouble integrating into society. Millions of people no longer had records. She’d still need a consistent backstory though. Good thing her parents had taught her many relevant skills in the data-keeping and sneaking areas.

“You’re frowning,” David rubbed his finger along her brow.

“Just thinking,” Susan replied, giving him a smile. “I have a life here: one place, one time. I don’t know where to start.”

 

**Batoka Trading Station - 2010**

Ianto and Jack exited the umbilicus that linked the _Proprion_ to the station’s docking web. Since they were the only ones exiting here, the ribbed spongy umbilicus retraced as soon as they were away. Ianto watched through the clear triangular panels of the docking web as the _Proprion_ slowly banked free from the station. This was his first view of the exterior of the spacecraft. It was a dusty silver cone, with heat sink wings for atmospheric entry. The engines on its rear flared red once it was a safe distance away and the ship flashed white, vanishing into superluminal speeds.

“C’mon,” Jack led him into the station proper. They emerged into a bustling marketplace where beings of every species bartered and haggled amongst stall operators. “Stay close. I need to get you a translation implant.”

A large alien looking like a spider crossed with a piece of driftwood click-screeched and bumped into Ianto hard enough that he reflexively grabbed onto Jack’s greatcoat.

A little girl screamed. It wasn’t a scream of glee, but of terror. Jack began running towards the noise.

Ianto kept pace with him, and they emerged into a narrow alley between the back walls of a hat stall and a fish seller. In front of them was a young girl with a peach dress, short dark hair and wide eyes. She stared at them warily.

“You shouldn’t be here,” she said to Ianto.

“Why are _you_ here, tarot-girl?” Jack asked.

Before the girl could answer, there was a frantic woman shouting “Rhosyn! Rhosyn!” The woman emerged on the other end of the alley. She ran forwards and kneeled, hugging Rhosyn. “Oh god, my cariad.”

Ianto frowned at the woman; she had dark hair and a long nose above wide lips. She reminded him of someone, but he couldn’t place who.

“Mam!” Rhosyn pointed behind Jack and Ianto.

The two of them spun and found three tall aliens behind them. The newcomers had bulbous heads with no mouths over black suits made of slimy material. The three aliens titled their heads and hissed, they pointed with long fingers.

Without removing his eyes from the creatures, Ianto reached around Jack’s waist to Jack’s gun. He pulled it out from the holster and shot each alien between the eyes.

Jack turned to him and shouted. “What the hell?” He yanked the gun from Ianto’s hand. “You can’t shoot bullets in a pressurized dome!” he pointed up at the transparent panels high overhead arranged in a metal lattice, protecting the station from the vacuum of space.

“I’ve seen them before,” Ianto remembered. “In Carmarthen, and at Brecon Beacons, at Flat Holm and Whitehall. They’re everywhere. They keep following me, and attacking.”

“What are you talking about? Seen what?” Ianto grabbed Jack’s jaw and physically turned his head towards the dead creatures. “Woah.”

The woman came up to them, “you shouldn’t be here,” she said sternly, standing beside them on Jack’s right side. She stared strangely at Ianto. “You _really_ shouldn’t be here,” she seemed to disagree with Ianto’s presence specifically. The girl—Rhosyn--hid behind her mother’s leg, poking one eye out to watch him.

“We don’t want to start a territory dispute,” Jack gave her his most sincere ‘placate-the-threat’ smile. “We just want to buy a time ship, and then we’ll be out of your hair.”

She shook her head. “The only time ships here are the luxury models. You couldn’t afford them.”

“I can be very persuasive,” Jack said. Ianto nearly rolled his eyes.

“I think your husband’s getting jealous.”

Before he could protest, Jack carefully stepped on Ianto’s foot, as if to say, _don’t correct strangers, they might take offense._

“Who do I have to talk to,” Jack asked, “to see these luxury models?” Just by inflection, he managed to fill the question with innuendo.

She rolled her eyes. “Oh for…” she grabbed Jack’s left wrist, which his wriststrap was wrapped around, and shone a blue-tipped pen instrument at it. It bleeped. “There, I fixed it, now go, _travel_.” The last word was laden with enough innuendo to fill a university.

Jack stared at her with confusion and gratitude. “Why?”

“It was cruel to break it. You’re not meant for the slow path and you’re not mean to be _here_. Now _go_! Find your answers.”

Jack typed a command into the wriststrap’s computer. “Thank you.” He held Ianto’s hand on top of the control screen and sent them both into the time vortex.

 

**London, Earth - 2187**

Jack and Ianto flashed into existence in a valley made between two large piles of building debris.

“Where are we?” Ianto asked, taking a step and nearly stumbling on detritus.

Jack sniffed the air, “Oddly enough: Earth, London. Strange.” He studied the screen on his wriststrap. “I thought I set it to random.”

Ianto turned to him. “Random? Like an airless asteroid?”

“Nah, it’s got safety locks on it--maybe an abandoned asteroid, but nowhere without livable atmosphere.”

“Could that woman have done something to it? Sent us here specifically?”

“Possibly. Probably. If… _she_ did, the question is why?” Jack looked around. It was not just one pile of debris. Further away, he could see a ruined cityscape, dusty and ash covered, like a great battle had taken place. A Dalek saucer stuck out of the middle of one of the buildings. There was scaffolding and workers all over the place, reinforcing some structures, destroying others for parts. “What does she want me to do?”

 

**Batoka Trading Station - 2010**

The woman sighed. “You can come out now, he’s gone.”

A man came up behind her. He was tall and solid, with just a hint of grey at the temple. “Tad!” Rhosyn squealed. He lifted the girl into his arms, balancing her on the side of his hip. With his other arm, he hugged the woman.

“He thought you were the Doctor,” he said to her.

“Mmm, yes. I’ve _never_ seen him obey so swiftly.”


	5. Chapter 5

_People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect… But in reality, the universe is big and it’s vast, and complicated and ridiculous and sometimes, very rarely, impossible things just happen and we call them miracles._ – Excerpt from: The 900 Year Diary by The Doctor

 

**Church-ship _Justinian_**

The planet remained in her view. Ripples in the time-stream did not take this long to affect causality. Somehow, Kovarian’s plan had failed. She stared at the footage paused on her screen. The Abomination and his lover Ianto lay dead on the floor of Thames House, 2009. She must not let yet another setback alarm her. She must remain calm. Calmness bred precision. She summoned another troop commander.

Children were strange things, she couldn’t remember being one herself, but she’d read about the effect they had. People did such obscene things for their children; to give them a better life. They moved house, they _changed religions_ (Kovarian shuddered at the thought), they started wars and ended wars, they married and divorced… Children were important; whole planetary destinies had changed because of birth order and who inherited what. Perhaps by removing the daughter from the Founding Family…

There would be no reason to create Shadow, if there was no child to keep safe.

 

**London, Earth - 2187**

Jack stared across the landscape. He stood atop the roof of Westminster Abbey, what was left of it anyways. From here, he could see where the clock tower used to be, where the London Eye had fallen over and was now decayed through by the Thames. The river was brackish, filled with debris, and exhaust and leaked fuel from felled warships. In the distance, the buildings ended in a line. The demarcation was ruler straight, through houses or buses. On one side was the desolation of London, on the other side was fertile fields, farmland.

Ianto approached and balanced next to him on the shattered wall. Together, they watched as a group of scavenger-engineers worked on a stripped down engine. Metal piping diverted a small stream of the Thames through the engine block. Right now, it was being serviced: the pipes cleaned, the welds checked and the filters scrubbed. When the engine switched back on it would filter and boil the water, then condense it back, purifying it in seconds. A queue of people with buckets and jerry-cans stood at an outflow pipe, waiting and chatting.

“So this is the future?” Ianto spoke, his tone not quite level. “Alien invasions, infighting…” They’d arrived three days ago and spent all that time trying to discover why the mysterious woman had programmed Jack’s device to send them here. All they’d found out was the world was rebuilding after a decades long invasion of the Daleks and a group of Silurians had emerged from underground, supposedly to help with the rebuilding but really after the planet for their own.

In addition, the Doctor had been here, there were signs all over of his involvement. People spoke of a strange man, with three companions, who had helped the resistance turn the Dalek plan against them. They spoke of a new volcano in the countryside, which had destroyed the Dalek master-control ship. This had given the humans the opportunity they needed to overthrow the Dalek invaders.

Ianto sighed and shook his head. “We could spend years helping, but what are we meant to do that they couldn’t themselves?”

An engineer--a slight woman with a scarf holding back her hair--looked up and caught sight of them. She waved up to them. “Jack! Ianto! You’ve come back! Thank goodness.” A few curious others looked up at them and quickly dismissed them in favor of ongoing conversations.

Jack gestured to her. “Well, looks like _someone_ need us specifically.”

 

**Torchwood Archive**

“We never did Final Log out on your employee files,” the woman explained as she led them towards a half destroyed blue building. Ianto could see through the shattered walls into the structure. A broken sign on the mezzanine level proclaimed it to be _The Great Cobalt Pyramid sponsored by Van Statten Industries_. “Once we get the global finance system back on line, you’re in for a lot of back pay.”

“You were expecting us?” Jack asked warily.

“Not exactly; we always knew you were coming back, Cooper-Prime made sure of that. We just didn’t know when.” She stopped, bent to the ground, and pried open a rusty grate. It lifted on well-oiled hinges. “Come on, then.”

Two ladders and another grate later, they descended into a dry sewer tunnel. Tracks on the ground showed this tunnel was used often as the access corridor for several doors on either side.

“We’ve got the cells down here,” she pointed down one end of the tunnel. It was sealed off with bars and an old key lock. “Empty now of course.”

She took them past two doors and led them in to the third. It was a massive command room filled with computers and desks, mostly abandoned. Someone—long ago-- had tried to make it pleasing with rugs and wrought-iron features, even a massive green copper relief on the far wall, but it was still a dingy concrete room off a sewer line.

There was a woman at one of the computer stations. She glanced behind her, spotting Jack and Ianto, “Moira, nice to meet you.” Moira turned back to her work.

Seven steps up was a small platform big enough for a desk and a couple of chairs. There was a man sat there, studying faded yellow city plans. He was a striking figure, with prominent cheekbones and dark hair gone slightly grey.

“David, are you still at that?” she called up as she ascended. She kissed him on the cheek. “We have engineers for that now.” It must have been an old argument, because David mouthed the words as she said them.

“Hmpf, _Silurian_ engineers.”

She rolled up the plans amidst his protests. “Jack and Ianto have come back.”

David looked up at her intently. “Jack and Ianto?” he repeated.

She nodded and pointed.

He stared at them long and hard enough that Ianto began itching for a weapon. “I never believed it. Thought you were a story for the young ones, give them hope. Gotta keep Torchwood going, Jack and Ianto are coming back.” He stood up and slammed his fists on his desk. “You waltz in now!? Where were you, when we needed you? The entire world went to hell and where were the great Jack and Ianto?”

“David…”

“No, Susan.” He barked at her, “I know they’re…” he paused, calmed himself. “Look how young they are. Let me guess,” he addressed Jack, “you just skipped ahead, while we took the slow path.” Ianto tried to keep his expression clear, but David must have read the truth from his face. “Time travel,” he spat at them. “Must be nice.” He bumped against them as he descended the stairs and stomped out of the room. The door slammed shut behind him.

Susan sighed. “I’m sorry, about my husband. He’s not usually like this. It’s just been especially hard this past year. We thought all the fighting was done. We thought with the Daleks gone, everything would be perfect. The Purists have been getting restless…It’s a mess.”

She studied them intently, their clothing and body language. “You really did just jump ahead; you’re wearing the same clothes.” A brief expression of disappointment crossed her face. She pushed it away with a wan smile. “We have a room set aside for you, it’s not much, but it’s yours for as long as you’re here.”

::-::

Jack leaned wearily back against the closed door of their room. “We could always leave; let history take its course.” Jack shook his wrist, with his functioning vortex manipulator. “We could go to Baccalia in 13-7-1-8, the most luxurious spa in the universe--clothing forbidden.”

Ianto sat on the mattress, and smiled at the idea. He shook his head. “But you’d never do that.”

Jack slumped and sat down next to Ianto. He rested his head against Ianto’s shoulder. “No, but you could ask.”

“Can we run away to Baccalia and leave Earth to its fate?” Ianto asked, expressionless.

“Atta boy.” Jack kissed Ianto’s shoulder.

::-::

The next morning, Ianto was woken by an insistent urge in his brain. He had to get up right now. With Jack still asleep, Ianto sat on the floor and rummaged about in the bigger than they should be pockets of Jack’s greatcoat. He pulled out candy wrappers, café receipts, a box of bullets for the Webley, a small Nokia mobile, and finally the spongy coral. Back in the hub, months ago and over a century ago, the coral was a beautiful bronze color, now it was brownish and hardening. Ianto immediately knew she was wilting so far away from the energy of the Cardiff Rift. He needed to save her. Unbidden, the knowledge of how to break the plasmic shell and accelerate the growth by a factor of 59 came into his head. _I’d need a dimensional stabilizer_.

::-::

“Ianto!” Jack’s shout startled Ianto out of his concentration.

“Huh?” A small braid of wires fell out of his mouth where he’d been holding them out of the way. Ianto found himself sat on the floor next to a pile of detritus that was slowly spinning and blinking. There was part of an umbrella, a plastic spoon, a metal spoon, a cracked compact mirror, one half of a pair of trousers, paperclips and duct tape, among other things, all connected to create a dimensional stabilization field with a foldback harmonic of 36.3. The Lammastein’s non-technological technology was good for many things, but actually making a sonic tool would be more difficult. _Ah._ He held a bit of an ultrasound wand connected to a car battery in his hand. _That would do it, in a pinch._

Jack squatted down in front of him “What are you doing?”

In Ianto’s other hand he held the Tardis coral. It was back to being spongy and bronze. It was also ten times its original size. It was still only physically big enough to be held in his hand, the other mass was growing in a Tardis-created extra dimension. Ianto could feel her growing out into that dimension, creating nebulous ideas of rooms.

“She was dying in your pocket,” Ianto explained. “I can grow you a Tardis in about 400 days with this set up.”

“400 days?” Jack fell back off his heels. “That soon?”

Ianto nodded. “It’ll only have a few rooms at first…” he felt the need to qualify his answer.

Jack stared at him then at the rhythmically wobbling umbrella spines, then back to Ianto. “What do you see when you look at me?”

“I…see…you?”

“You don’t see anything wrong?” Jack swallowed hard. “Anything that makes you want to run away from me as fast as you can?”

Ianto stared hard at Jack from top to bottom: Bed hair, face, nice abs, white y-fronts, toned legs. “No. I just see you. Same as always.”

“Good, that’s good.”

 

**Church-ship _Justinian_**

Kovarian read the report. They had wasted four months trying to destroy the First Daughter as a child. She was too well protected. First her parents, then the Doctor. The Tardis had landed on Earth before the moon landing – how difficult was it for one Confessor to kill the little whelp? It wasn’t as though every single human was programmed to kill them –yet. She rubbed at her temples. Her eyepatch was itching against her skin, but she dare not take it off.

As much as it pained her to admit, she was running out of troops to send through time. She dare not return to the Church. Tasha Lem did not appreciate schism. She would not be merciful. The only way out of this situation was to succeed. She needed a new plan. One with finesse. Perhaps she could kill two birds with one stone -- _hmm, archaic saying but apt._

 

**Torchwood Archive - 2187**

Ianto and Jack stayed in Torchwood for a long time, navigating the new society, helping where they could. There was destruction and reconstruction to organize. There was new farmland annexes to be plotted out. The Silurians had set up a learning academy in the old parliament rooms, to teach survivors how to mine for Dalek parts and repurpose them safely. Susan introduced them to her family – husband David, sons Alex and Jamie, and daughter Sally.

David seemed to relish in assigning them the grungy work – such as separating the squidgy Dalek bodies from the still usable Dalekanium casings. Alex the eldest was working in one of the knowledge centers, trying to piece fragments of data from retrieved servers—salvaging whatever scientific know-how he could find. The internet backbones may have been long destroyed, but intracontinental communication was now possible. Little Jamie would ask Jack and Ianto questions about Earth that was, before the Dalek attacks, while Sally just sat there, playing with soft toys.

Susan liked to assign them to the farming sectors. Since the Daleks had attacked, the available technology had stagnated and reverted. Many of the systems being used by the humans were bits they kludged from what remained. Ianto found his knowledge of the old Torchwood Mainframe programming came in handy when dealing with an auto-combine-harvester that kept driving off the path.

Ianto found it odd that none of the Silurians truly interacted with the humans. There were Silurian sectors and Human sectors, and Silurian schools and Human schools. Other than what was necessary for rebuilding the planetary infrastructure, the Silurians kept to themselves. Back home, Jack used to love to say _the 21 st century is when it all changes, and you’ve got to be ready_. It was nearing the end of the 22nd century and in some places it seemed like the 1940s. There was the haunted eyes look of people who know something terrible was going to happen but wouldn’t mention it for fear of causing it.

Humanity wasn’t ready for alien co-existence. He could see it in the graffiti –tags that said “ _keep earth pure”_ —and in the way mothers grabbed their children when Silurians passed by in transit.

::-::

One day, after being there six months, Ianto encountered a woman manning one of the farming equipment programming stations in what used to be Ealing but was now Farm Sector 387. Ianto felt cold rush down his back at her round face and the gap in her teeth. Her hair was shorn close to her head but such practicalities did nothing to hide the resemblance to Gwen Cooper.

She smiled politely at him, and when he continued to stare, grew confused and wary. She bent her head back over her computer and focused on typing code. “Please sir, I’m not for sale,” she said in a small voice; the type of voice that wasn’t sure it would be listened to.

Utterly baffled and seeing no way to salvage the situation _Hi, I knew your great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother, do you want to come to work for Torchwood?_ Ianto left.

When he lay in bed, the encounter preyed on his thoughts. Was this what it was like, being a Timelord? Skipping along the path, brushing against people’s lives, but never seeing how they got to where they were, never seeing them grow. All this time, he’d been thinking of Gwen as still pregnant, and she was, back in 2010, but now, she was dead and buried somewhere with all her kids, and their kids, all the way down to that programmer. He didn’t even know her name, if she was a Cooper or a Williams or any other surname that had married into the lineage.

He stared at the proto-Tardis, still wired into the kludge-mess, but now a vivid white color. It was as tall as a man, and shaped like a fat plinth. Jack lay sleeping behind him, arm around his waist, between him and the door—protective, even in sleep. Ianto didn’t get much sleep that night.

**Church-ship _Justinian_**

The Media-clerics analyzed fragments of data transmissions from Ancient Cardiff. They graphed probability vectors for days, until their screens were filled with nonsensical spaghetti patterns of causes  and effects and outcomes. F.E.2188 England was a seething mass of resentment ready for one push in the right direction. All the simulations showed that one bomb placed in the right room with the right people would stir up just enough stagnant hatred for a momentary riot. If the riot were steered towards the correct target, the _Shadow’s_ First Family could be eliminated in one attack.

It was ridiculously easy to implant an idea in the populace of a decimated world. A whisper here, the dead bodies of prominent peace talkers, a sprinkle of evidence, and a decade long pax could be broken. Using puppet media accounts, a special team was dedicated to spreading inflammatory statements across the Cardiff darknet in order to direct the untapped aggressions of the human populace. Riot mentality would ensure there would be no one person to blame – no way to stop the circumstance. The Abomination’s Mate and The First Daughter would die together.

 

**Cwmtaff, Cardiff - 2188**

The bomber slid into the publically held Ambassadorial meeting and sat in the very back, at the top of the audience rows. The human Indira Mack and the Silurian Eldane from the Silurian Federacy were talking with David Campbell from Torchwood and Siobhan MacKensie from the United Earth Government. As they talked about rights concessions and negotiated land agreements between their two peoples, the bomber wondered how he’d gotten there. The last thing he remembered was going to sleep the previous night in the house he shared with five other people. He’d gone to bed, and now was here – watching the talks with hundreds of other people. He didn’t even know there was a bomb until he happened to glance away from the ambassadors and towards the entranceway. A strange tall creature with a huge grey head and a black suit stared at him, hissing silently. And then he remembered. There was a cloaked bomb under the discussion table and he’d put it there.

He stood up to scream out a warning but then the entire meeting room was flooded with a flash of light and vaporized.

**Torchwood Archive**

Ianto was asleep when it happened. It startled him from a dream where he was swimming through the stars. Ianto felt Jack lurch up next to him, “whazzat?”

A pale mauve emergency light lit up in the corner, enough to see by.

 “Time to go!” Jack blurted as he threw Ianto’s clothes up at him from the floor.

Ianto jumped into his trousers and half carried half climbed into his other clothes as they ran towards the command center. It was empty when they arrived save for Susan who sat at one of the desks staring at the wall. Ianto noted that the copper relief along the wall had split and slid open to reveal an array of computer screens monitoring the activity from above ground.

 “Report,” Jack commanded.

Susan croaked meaningless syllables for a few moments while tears gathered in her eyes. “The-the conference in Cardiff….David…”

The screen showed live satellite footage of Cwmtaff – or what had once been Cwmtaff and was now a crater. In one corner of the screen, an inset showed scrolling feed from the darknet as messages bounced between anyone with a capable device.

_“…ohgodohgodohgod…”_

_“…who…”_

_“…SILURIAN SCUM…”_

_“…tHE PURISTS I TELL YOU…”_

_“…DOES ANYONE KNOW WHERE REBECCA THORNE IS PLEASE…”_

_“…never shuold hav trusted…”_

_“…i just herd Indira wuz there…”_

_“…SILURIAN WHORE…”_

_“…oh god INDIRA…”_

_“…INDIRA...”_

The land above their heads shuddered with a muffled explosion. The room shook and dust fell from the ceiling. The lights dimmed with another shudder then shut off. The only illumination came from the screen.

Jack took over Susan’s station and brought up the view from outside. Rioters were attacking the old building remnants above.

_“…FACSITS…”_

The darknet messages scrolled in faster than Ianto could read. Whatever messages were being sent were sending the population into a frenzy.

“ _…torchwod did this…”_

_“…I herd that Campbell talkin…”_

_“…never liked silurins…”_

_“…torchwood?...”_

_“…DEATH TO SILURANS…”_

_“…DEATH TO HUMANS…”_

The room shook again, and more dust fell as a large crack appeared in the concrete ceiling. Behind, the sound of destruction came from the main corridor.

“Mam!” Alex ran in, carrying young Sally on his hip and leading Jamie by the hand. The walls creaked. Susan ran to her children; she transferred Sally into her arms.

_“…Torchwood but they help me…”_

_“…a trick trap all a lie…”_

_“…TORCHWOOD…”_

With pickaxes, dalek stem-guns and repurposed laser siege weapons, the rioters above were attacking and dismantling the remnants of the Great Cobalt Pyramid above, trying to dig their way into the Torchwood access tunnels.

“We have to get out of here!” Jack yelled. He typed on his vortex manipulator. “I can carry two at a time, come on!”

 _Come to me,_ Ianto heard. “This way!” He ran out the room.

“Ianto!”

As the walls shuddered from the attack, Ianto ran all the way back to their room. By the bed, was a white door that hadn’t been there before. _I’m ready._ Just a door and jamb, no supporting wall around it.

Ianto turned the golden knob and the door swung inward, revealing a small white room. A mushroom shaped console stood in the center, golden round pockets decorated the walls. There was another door on the far wall.

“Yan-to!” Jack shouted from behind. He ran in, followed by Susan and the kids. The door shut behind him.

The room shook and groaned, the console flashed, and the central column pumped up and down.

 

**Somewhere in the vortex**

Susan sniffed away her tears. “Ship this new, wherever we’re going will take a while…” she looked at her children. “I need to…Alex, Jamie…” She held Sally tight in her arms.

Jamie leaned against Alex’s leg. “Where’s da?” Jamie asked.

Alex, barely an adult, stared at Susan with horrified understanding. He squeezed Jamie’s shoulders.

The door at the other end of the room swung open revealing a hallway with seven doors.

“Go, take your time.” Jack said to Susan.

“You’re gonna need help piloting…”

“Not my first time in a Tardis, I’ll be fine, go. Be with your children.”

Susan nodded and led her kids down the hall and through a bedroom door.

When Ianto was sure they wouldn’t be overheard, he asked, “is this what happens then?”

“What?”

“We land somewhere, it’s all fun and exciting, and then shit happens…”

Jack nodded ruefully. “…and sometimes, if we’re lucky, we can save someone.” He tilted his head in the direction of Susan and her children.

“What’s the point?”

“To make the universe a little kinder than we left it.”

::-::

The following day, the ship was still wandering through the cosmos, not having landed anywhere. Susan was still sequestered in her room with her children for privacy. Jack felt sure Susan would emerge by the end of the day. Ianto silently disagreed; a person doesn’t just lose their husband and livelihood at once and bounce back so quickly. He had had experience with Lisa, the only reason he had gotten out of bed at first was to monitor her life support. Susan didn’t even have that. The ship was providing food, so there was no real reason to get out and do anything.

Ianto took the time to explore, while Jack studied the console controls – him being the only one with experience with this type of craft. The ship was small, not finished growing. There was the console room, three bedrooms, a kitchen, a bathroom, a room that held a giant red sun (he quickly left that one and vowed never to go in again), a glowy ball room and the engine room.

At least, he thought it was the engine room. It subtly vibrated and ticked. It was a small room with absolutely nothing in it. All the walls were the same size in every direction and decorated with a very steampunk gold gear pattern that slowly spun and turned. It made him feel as though he were standing in a very large brown clockwork cube.

Currently, Ianto was in the Glowy Ball Room. It was dark and low-ceilinged. Growing up from the ground was something that was almost but not quite unlike a willow tree. Hundreds of bulbous white glowing balls were hanging from the branches. He lay on the ground staring up at them. It reminded him of when he was little and would lay under the Christmas tree. He wondered what time it was for his family back in 2010, if they’d celebrated Christmas yet. If his sister, Rhiannon missed him. Then he remembered, it didn’t matter, he was in a time machine. It could be any time he wanted back home. He decided that it should be sometime in 2008, back home. Yes, Owen and Tosh would be alive and bickering and everything would be normal – for Torchwood.

He must have dozed off, because he awoke when the door swished open.

Jack peered in. “Hmm, architectural reconfiguration system, nice.” He sat next to Ianto.

“I’ve just been calling it the Glowy Ball Room.”

“All Tardises have one. It reconstructs particles according to your needs.”

They were quiet for a long while, lost in their own thoughts.

“You should name her; all good ships need a name.”

Ianto sat up. “She’s your ship, you should name her.”

Jack shook his head. “You’re a Timelord, there’s a special bond there I’ll never have.”

“Can’t we just call her ‘Tardis’?”

“ _I named myself ‘Compassion’_.” The female voice came from all around them. It echoed through the branches making them tink like chimes.

Ianto was startled, but Jack took a talking ship in stride.

“Hello, _Compassion_.”

She giggled. “ _Hello_.” Ianto got the impression in his head that someone was waving at him. He waved back, and then felt silly for waving at a tree. _“It’s so very nice to meet you; we’re going to have such wonderful adventures together.”_

“That’s the plan,” Jack smiled his flirty smile. Ianto smiled back, agreeing.

::-::

Jack was right; Susan did come out of her bedroom that night—only for a moment, however, to check on the flight-pattern. Jack huffed as she checked the instruments, but when it was obvious she knew what she was doing; he stood aside and let her fret.

Finally on the fourth day, Susan came out, leading her children. “It’s time, I think. We can’t stay here forever.”

“We’d be happy to have you,” Ianto said, and Jack nodded in agreement.

“This isn’t the right place for me. I have some people waiting for me.” She typed a destination on the console and Compassion began bouncing around. Jack twiddled a few switches and the flight smoothed out. “It’s not safe,” she continued. “I’ll never be safe,” she stared straight into Ianto’s eyes, “and it’s time they accepted that.”

 _Compassion_ gave a small ding and the engines stopped.

“It didn’t make the noise,” Jack said puzzled.

Susan smiled. “It’s only the brakes make it do that.”

Ianto, who was closest to the doors, swung it open and looked out. They were on a rise, overlooking a rocky canyon. At the base of the canyon, he could barely make out a carving. Soldiers locked in some horrific battle, and further along, one solitary figure. A river snaked and gushed through the valley.

Susan led her children out. “Crafe Tec Heydra,” she sighed, “haven’t been gone long at all. I can still see the picnic.”

Ianto saw a checked blanket spread out with a basket, just lying on the sand near the river, abandoned.

Jack followed her out. Susan startled. “We’re not just gonna leave you here,” he said. “Gotta make sure you’re safe.”

She smiled in gratitude.

All together they left the Tardis.

 

**Crafe Tec Heydra, Shadow - 45823/diamond.45 [200,000B.G.]**

Susan led their little group along a well-walked switchback down the canyon walls. She seemed to know where they were going—heading to the picnic blanket. She and her children were so far ahead, it was impossible for conversation. Ianto walked side by side with Jack, who smiled at him reassuringly.

They about reached the canyon floor before he realized someone else was with them. He turned and the first thing he noticed was the ship had vanished from the rise; the second thing he noticed was Toshiko walking with them. She looked like she just came from some post-apocalyptic Victorian wasteland, but it was definitely Toshiko.

Toshiko, who had been dead for years.

Caught between two items of importance, all he managed to get out was, “hey!” but it was enough. Jack spun around.

“Where’s the Tardis?” he asked, dully.

Toshiko waved her hand, with a cheeky smile. “Here.” She stomped towards them, “you didn’t think I was just gonna sit there, I’m gonna get fed up sitting on shelves—have gotten fed up—is fed up. Fed up, fed up…well, that’s a bizarre phrase.”

It clicked for Ianto. “ _Compassion_?”

 _Compassion_ smiled. “I took this form from your past. I can change it if you don’t like; you have so many jangling around in that head of yours.” Between one blink and the next, _Compassion_ was Lisa. She smiled shyly.

He turned away, closing his eyes. “No! Toshiko is fine.”

When he opened his eyes, _Compassion_ stood in front of him – Toshiko-form once again-- her head tilted, a worried frown on her face. “Sorry.”

::-::

Susan took the opportunity granted by Jack and Ianto’s inattention to hurry her children into a small crack in the canyon wall.

“Mum, what…” Alex muttered.

The crack quickly widened until it was a small cave big enough for three to stand abreast. The cave walls were a dusty brown and on the far side, not three steps away was a golden doorknob set into the wall.

“Come on.” She turned the handle, and the hidden Tardis opened.

“But, he was just…” Alex stared. Inside were two people.

“Mam, Tad,” Susan greeted them, coldly. “This means you knew, all along.”

“Yes,” her Tad replied.

Her Mam looked on the verge of tears. “Oh, Rhosyn. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“I just lost my husband and you’re sorry?”

 


	6. Interlude: the Birth of the Second Ianto

_“See that snake, the mark of the corsair, fantastic bloke; he had that snake as a tattoo in every regeneration. Didn’t feel like himself unless he had the tattoo or herself a couple of times ooh ooh hoo, she was a bad girl.”_ – Tardis Matrix Recording 673-4g#82-43p (y3o)

**Cassini Nebula Asteroid Mining Station - 54-879**

Ianto had read somewhere of The Dreadful Logic of Necessity. In times of terrible famine, there was a species that would eat their newborns. The logic being that the child was always going to die, as soon as the situation occurred, but the mother could live on, and, when there was food, have more children.

Staring at the corpses of the station workers, and knowing a Dalek fleet was approaching on their way to the inner planets, Ianto felt a Dreadful Logic overtake him. Everyone here had died to destroy the Daleks already on the station, not knowing there was a whole additional fleet out there headed for their homes and families.

Almost on automatic, he headed to the radio room. There was enough power still in the base for a delta wave transmission. That would kill the fleet no problem. It would kill him too. He mind raced with the necessary steps, even as he weaved his way down the corridor, through shattered Dalek shells and shattered bits of people. There was a body blocking the door to the radio room, he pushed it aside with a muttered, “sorry.” Inside, he went straight to the control panel and sonicked open the casing, revealing an orderly mass of crystal circuit boards and quantum processors.

His phone rang. It was Jack. “ _Ianto, where are you?”_

“I’m in the radio room,” he answered, balancing the phone on his shoulder. He sonicked the first crystal. The harmonics had to be just right to fold the wave into the delta range and produce Van Cassadyne energy. He forced new growth in the crystal lattice, making it stronger and more able to withstand the terrible vibrations at those frequencies.

Jack tutted down the line. _“There’s no one in range to call for help…”_

“There are billions of people on the planets beyond this field. A delta wave—“

 _“IANTO, NO!”_ He heard Jack start running through the corridors. _“Don’t do this!”_

“You know me; I’m not going to let billions die. I’ve walked into death with you too many times to run away just because the odds are a bit longer now.”

_“You will die! I told you, you are not allowed to die. Let me do it!”_

“Can you get here in the next few minutes?” Ianto asked, knowing the answer. “By the time you get here the Dalek fleet will be out of signal range.” There were several levels and jammed doorways between Ianto and Jack. “I’m a Time Lord, Jack. I can regenerate.” Ianto closed the control panel, he was done. “ _God,_ I hope I can regenerate,” he added mostly to himself. They had never had opportunity to test just how much of a Time Lord he really was. All those years they could have been doing tests, hounding the Doctor for answers. Where had the time gone?

He twisted the frequency and wavelength dials until a repeating jagged crescent pattern appeared on the scanner. Now all he needed was something to transmit across the delta wave. Some word or sound. It was the last things the Daleks would ever hear after all—best make it memorable. Perhaps a pithy quote or a pre-mortem one-liner, but nothing came to mind. The microphone seemed to mock him. He needed to make some kind of sound but his ‘dry humor in the face of danger’ had abandoned him and all that ran through his mind was a nearly-paralyzing sense of _Nononononono_. _Seventy years wasn’t enough._

_“No, stop this. Stop it!”_

“I’m sorry.” Ianto plugged his phone into the transmission port in time for Jack’s voice yelling “ _IANTO!”_ to come through and be the sound he needed.

The machinery took Jack’s voice and amplified it into the delta wave band. At those transmission strengths, the signal matched the electrical frequency of electro-chemical membranes. Anything with a brain had the cerebral matter vibrate itself apart.

Standing where he was, the wave hit Ianto first. He felt his brain stutter and his body spasm with random electrical impulses. He fell forward against the console and slid to the floor. Blood vessels burst through his blood-brain barrier.

Five corridors down, the signal killed Jack.

In space, it utterly destroyed all the Daleks aboard their ships.

::-::

Jack found Ianto collapsed on the ground. Somehow, River was there, holding his head in her lap. As Jack skidded and knelt next to them, he saw Ianto was a mess. Blood covered his face from where vessels had burst in his eyes. He watched Jack with glassy eyes.

“No one should regenerate alone,” River said, explaining her presence. Experience laced her tone. She caressed Ianto’s face, rubbing back his hair. It had grown long in their time away from Torchwood, and was now slick with blood and sweat.

“I don’t know how,” Ianto said, forcing the words. They were barely whispers.

“Do you feel that itch? Like you’re standing on a cliff edge and you can’t see the bottom.”

“Something in the darkness…it wants me.”

River shook her head. “Ignore it, it’s not for you.”

Ianto’s face scrunched with pain. “Dizzy. Want to fall.” Each breath seemed to hurt him.

“Do it, let go. Just fall. Fall into your next self.”

Ianto began to glow with a greenish light. “Oh my,” he said, stronger. An inner strength pushed him to his feet. The glow grew until he seemed to be a human-shaped column of green-yellow energy. He arched back and screamed as the energy burst outward in great streams.

Jack watched, utterly transfixed, from his position on the ground. Ianto’s clothing shifted, and a few shirt buttons burst off their strings, as his new body shape stretched the fabric.

“Oh dear,” said River. “Well, that’s always a possibility, of course.”

The screaming changed in pitch before ceasing with the energy flow. A woman with long dark hair, a wide mouth and long nose stared at them dazedly. Jack felt he recognized Ianto’s new form, but he couldn’t tell from where.

Ianto stared at River in comprehension. She took a step forward and stumbled. River stood and caught her. “I remember. You’re my mam.” She fainted.

“WHAT!?” Jack exclaimed.

“Oh, my boy.” River kissed Ianto’s forehead. “My _girl_ ,” she corrected herself.

Jack stood up. “Ianto is your son-- _daughter_?”

“Timelords don’t grow on trees, Jack. Ianto had to have come from somewhere.” River arranged Ianto in Jack’s arms. “Come on, she needs the Tardis.” She led Jack back through the debris filled corridors.

Jack carried Ianto, one arm around her back, one under her knees. “I thought…the Doctor…”

“…is her father, yes.”

“Wait, no. Barnabus? I played with him as a baby.”

“Yes, and the Doctor once changed my diaper. We’re time travelers, dear... You’ve loved her for the past seventy years; don’t stop now just because it got weird. Ianto needs you.”

“I wouldn’t… never.”

 

**Somewhere in the vortex**

While River piloted _Compassion_ to safety, Jack took Ianto to their bedroom. He laid her on the bed and gazed upon her new form: a face that could be both stern and happy, still covered with her previous self’s blood.

He removed her waistcoat, changed out her dress-shirt and pants for loose pajamas and washed the blood and grime from her face and hands. All the callouses and scars of Ianto’s life were gone. Jack found himself holding Ianto’s hand against his face, leaving a trail of kisses against her fingers, feeling her warmth against his cheek.

::-::

Ianto woke with a great need. He pushed Jack’s arm off his waist with a muttered “gottapee”, stumbled in his first few steps, collided with the ensuite door jamb, and stood in front of the toilet. He propped one hand on the wall, and reached into his trousers with the other.

There was nothing there.

He remembered and his- _her_ head dropped with the realization. “Right,” he muttered mostly to himself. he dropped trou, sat down and peed. He stayed there for a while, just sitting, staring down at his new form. Good news, he could regenerate. Bad news, he was a woman until the next time. If he went of old age, that meant he would be a woman for at least two thousand years, maybe more; far longer than he’d ever been a man. Eventually, he got up.

Jack was sitting up in bed when she returned. “You were in there a long time. Are you okay?”

The emotional and psychological enormity of his gender change was too big to put into words. “River Song is my mother,” Ianto said. It was possibly the least problematic of his current issues.

Ianto had always known he was adopted. Mam and Tad were very clear that it didn’t make them love him any less than his sister Rhiannon. Satisfied with his lot, he’d never felt the urge to find his birth parents.

“Yes,” Jack agreed, unnecessarily.

He sat next to him, leaning against his side. “That’s why he saved me isn’t it? The Doctor is my father?”

“Yes. River is still here, if you need to…bond.”

“She always did like me best, back at Torchwood… Makes sense now.”  

* * *

 

_\--“Word on the belt is you’re looking for time travel?_

_\--“Are you selling?”_

_\-- “A vortex manipulator, fresh off the wrist of a handsome time agent…(Maldovar sighs)  I said off the wrist. Not cheap, Doctor Song. Have you brought me a pretty toy?”_

_\--“This is a Calisto Pulse. It can disarm microexplosives from up to twenty feet.”_

_\--“What kind of microexplosives?”_

_\--“The kind I just put in your wine.”_ \--Memeowire transcript from Delirium Archive. Pre-Headless Dorium Maldovar talking to the Holy Assassin Melody Pond. _Archive note: In Melody Pond’s fourth body, she lived under the alias River Song, the Gamma Forest translation of her designation._

**The Maldovarium - 5140**

It was crowded in the casino resort. The owner had yet to become a headless monk. Once Dorium Maldovar was conscripted, the monks would claim it as a tithe, and the entire planetoid would become a ghost town. Jack wasn’t particularly worried about that, it was a few years ahead. He, Ianto and _Compassion_ would be long gone before that happened, and for now it was still the best place in the Belt to relax. Jack felt that anyone who had just switched genders for the first time needed a break, so he had recommended this place to Ianto.

Right now, Jack was browsing the wares in the shantytown that had spung up outside the Casino gates. It seemed that every seller in the sector had a booth to peddle to gullible tourists.

As he was examining a late Palushi-inspired sythzoid, a short red being with a large head frill came towards him.

“Dorium Maldovar wishes to express his thanks…” the being said. The voice came from a box around his waist, a cheap translator unit. The expensive ones could make it seem the voice was coming from the speakers mouth, whereever it happened to be on their body.

“…thanks?” Jack asked.

“…and provide compensation.” A roll of credit chips was forced into his right hand--500,000 a very nice sum.

“I don’t under…” Jack’s left arm fell to the ground and the being quickly snatched it up and ran away.”…stand?”

Jack stared for a moment. There was no blood. The being had used a medlaz blade, which left a perfect medical seal behind. His arm and his sleeve ended a few inches below his elbow.

“HEY! You could have asked.”

The stall owner stared.

Jack pointed in the direction of the amputator with his remaining hand. “That was rude.”

::-::

Jack caught up with Ianto in their room. She was attempting to cook something, but the appliances in the kitchen were giving her trouble.

“No, no. You want to sautee that tuber,” the stove bleated at her.

“She’s not a Plaxvian, are you blind?” the oven snarled at the stove.

“Pardon me, some of us can’t see anything but the ceiling.”

Ianto slammed the knife onto the cutting board (“ow”). “Okay, one more word out of either of you clowns, and I’ll order takeaway, see if I don’t.”

Jack removed his distressed jacket and threw it in the recyling unit (“thanks.”) “Where’s _Compassion_?” he asked.

“Playing roulette, I think.” Ianto wiped her hands on her apron and approached. “She keeps changing the rules of probability though—what happened to you!”

Jack tsked. “She’s winning too much?”

“What, no. She’s making sure the most needful win, but never mind that. Where’s your arm gone?”

“Some alien only wanted me for my vortex manipulator.” Jack sat on the recliner in the lounge. “Give me a reset? Please.” He waved his stump. “Could be ages till my next death,” he wheedled.

Ianto placed her hands on his face and caressed his cheeks. “On, three. One-” with her not inconsiderable Time Lord strength, she twisted sharply. Jack’s neck broke and he slumped dead.

“What happened to three?” were the first words Jack said upon waking.

“You would have tensed up expecting it.”

“We are far too blasé about this.”

Ianto shrugged in agreement.

::-::

Later that night, _Compassion_ blinked into the suite.

“So, I might have just won a planet” she stated, wearing Jack’s body. “…and by might I mean _did_ …and by planet I mean _parsec_ …with planets in.”

Jack stared, blinking incredulously. “What were you playing?” he asked.

“Craps. I didn’t have an identi-strip for the transfer, so I used yours, hope you don’t mind.”

“Thanks?”

 

**Parsec 3g5x7d89x73h2hh - 5140**

Jack and Ianto leaned out of the doorway of _Compassion’s_ ship form. The parsec _Compassion_ won was mostly barren, but it did have one solar system within. One planet of which looked promising. Right now it was a lava filled proto-planet, but it was in the godilocks zone of the binary system.

Jack looked down upon it consideringly and figured the data in his head. “I give it three billion years and we can move in.”

“You think?” Ianto asked.

“Yeah…three billion should be long enough for a robust ecosystem; no sentient life, but we don’t want that anyways. Sentients might not like the idea we own their planet.”

“Huh.”

The planet had two moons circling quite close to the surface, too close, Jack figured. Their orbits would decay and they would fall into the planet destroying it.

“We’re gonna have to fix the moons though, make their orbits more stable, fix the timing. Don’t want them to ever be on the same side of the planet at the same time, the tidal forces would tear apart the mantle.”

Ianto stared at him. “You’ve done this before, haven’t you?” she realized.

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

_“Time lord emergency messaging system. In an emergency we wrap up our thoughts in psychic containers and send them through time and space. Anyways, there’s a living Time Lord still out there, and it’s one of the good ones….” –_ Tardis Matrix Recording 673-4g#82-43p (y3o)

**Leadworth, Earth - 1996**

A little girl sat, waiting for a terrific man to whisk her away in a time machine.

 

**Florida, Earth - 1969**

A little girl sat, waiting for a terrific man to whisk her away in a time machine.

 

**Arcadia, Gallifrey - 128.54/badger.delta.468.3**

A little girl sat, waiting for a terrific man to whisk her away in a time machine. She came from a genetic line of little girls waiting for the same terrific man—but not in the right order.

 

**Church-ship _Justinian_**

Kovarian sat in her quarters. It had been a long day, and she should have been using her rest period wisely. But instead, she seethed. Every single thing she did to defeat the Doctor failed. She did not take this as a cosmic indication that she should cease her efforts. Rather she took it as a trial she must pass to better herself and the Faith. The greater the struggle, the greater the eventual rewards. At this rate she’d be promoted to Mother Superious for all her efforts.

Her ship was running a foldback parallel timestream at an average factor of 2000. Events as they happened in the far-past were synced to the now, and so the past and present were running in order --only at rapid speed: years for every minute. Unfortunately, that meant she was running out of time to stop the Time Lord.

Oh she could order the ship to climb up out of real time for jaunts to the past or future. She had for some of her efforts. But every jaunt weakened the time space around the ship. Soon, temporal anomalies would start affecting the crew.

She should send out a ship wide announcement, warning of temporary cases of extreme youth and chronometer mis-syncing.

Maybe some rest would be a good plan. An idea might come to her in a dream.

**Tardis _Compassion_ \- Somewhere in space**

The second Ianto; for that’s what she was, the second of thirteen possible bodies; sat atop _Compassion_. The ship was hanging in space exactly the way a clockwork box shouldn’t. Ianto sat cross-legged on the large hull, staring out at a nebula. _Compassion_ had extended the air shield so Ianto could experience space unencumbered by a spacesuit. In every direction the space-scape was awash with blues and greens, with specks of blacks and reds.

One of Ianto’s hands idly twisted a cog on the hull. It made a ticking noise like a clock. She’d been a woman now for 26,901 days, two years longer than she’d ever been a man. It hadn’t even occurred to her until this morning.

“You’re pregnant.” _Compassion_ blinked into view, sitting next to her. The body-form sat with her legs dangling off the edge of her own ship-form. “I don’t think I saw this coming.” She wore a blonde woman, and as always, her clothes were tattered like from a war. Ianto had a feeling she’d seen the face before, but couldn’t place it. It was definitely a face from her past, though; _Compassion_ always used those when she wanted to talk to her.

“You don’t know everything,” Ianto chided.

“I think I did once, maybe.” _Compassion_ stared confused for a moment then shook it off.

::-::

Jack Harkness sat on one of the biobeds in _Compassion’s_ medical bay staring at the computer readout. He’d smelled it this morning; the change in Ianto’s hormones. The computer just confirmed his suspicions. Ianto was pregnant. It was too soon to tell the gender. Of course, gender was a preference with Time Lords, so it’s not like it mattered what the baby was born as.

Ianto was pregnant.

He supposed he’d been lucky, so far. In his long life, he’d only ever had two children. One was back when he was fully 51st century human-ish. He’d been a young twenty-something, broke after his gap-year and he’d donated his womb to incubate a sterile couple’s baby. He’d never known the gender, or the name or anything. Hadn’t wanted to, hadn’t cared. He cared now. He’d had a lot of years to gather regrets.

The second child he’d had with Lucia Moretti, a fellow Torchwood agent. They named the girl Melissa. Of course, knowing Torchwood was too dangerous for a child, Lucia took her into hiding, renamed her Alice. He saw her on occasions, but as the years rolled by and he didn’t age, he went from being a distant father to a distant uncle.

::-::

 _Compassion_ leaned over, bumping Ianto’s shoulder. “Soooo, baby?”

“Yeah.”

“Not a good thing?”

“If I’m lucky, I could have maybe two thousand years in each body,” Ianto said. “Do you know how long Jack will live?” she added sarcastically.

 _Compassion_ shrugged. “I once sat on a shelf for ten million years,” she said, apropos of nothing.

“It’s amazing how well-adjusted you are.”

“Shut up,” the blonde grinned.

Ianto stretched out so she lay flat on the hull. In the space of a blink, _Compassion_ was laid out next to her. Ianto took her dark hair out of its updo and let it fan out over the ship edge into space. Blonde hair and black entwined floating in space along random eddies.

After a while _Compassion_ spoke. “You don’t get rid of it.”

“Are you telling me, or asking me.”

“I could show you. All the days to come. What your daughter will do, or won’t do. The grand empires that will rise or fall. Everything your choice could make.”

Ianto thought about it. Her human side thought it would be nice to have a cheat sheet to future events, knowing what to avoid. One of her time-senses told her that it wouldn’t be nice at all, it would be confining, atrap; time can be rewritten but not once it’s been read. “I….no? I don’t want to know the future. So thanks for the spoiler alert.”

“…it could be a boy? The humanoid gender binary confuses me?”

“You’ve lived with Jack and I for decades. I know you know all about the humanoid gender binary, you _perv_.”

::-::

Jack scowled at himself. He hadn’t thought about Alice, or his grandson Steven in decades. They were his descendants and he’d forgotten they existed.

“It’s not your fault, lad” _Compassion_ said with the northern voice of Jack’s first Doctor. He stood in front of Jack wearing a tattered leather jacket and an empty bandolier Jack had never seen his Doctor wear.

Jack stared.

“The human brain can only hold so much,” the Doctor-form continued. “You should start investing in external storage.”

Jack scoffed. “There aren’t enough computers in the universe for all the things I’ll see.”

“In the year two-hundred-hundred, the Face of Boe is pregnant for the fortieth time.”

Jack blinked non-plussed.

“They aren’t real babies; they have no consciousness, no soul. They’re just brains in jars, plug-and-play receptacles for the Boe-brain’s memories.”

“That’s… disturbing…and that’s my future?”

“That depends on how you define ‘self’… and ‘future’...” In one instant, The Compassion-Doctor was sat next to Jack. He spoke gently. “As the timeline is now, a being who was once you, but who will have no memory of ever being you, will die in the year 5.5/apple/53.”

Jack felt his eyes fill with tears of horror. “Why are you telling me this?”

“I don’t believe in spoiler alerts. I believe in happy endings. Right now, Ianto is considering a choice.”

“What choice?”

“I think you know.”

::-::

“Five billion years,” _Compassion_ said suddenly. “…ish.”

Ianto turned to look at her. “What?”

“You asked how long Jack will live.”

“I didn’t actually want to know.” Ianto turned away, tears welling in her eyes. “Five billion years, my existence will be a blip. He won’t even remember me.”

“Stop thinking linearly. You don’t have to spend your time all at once.”

Ianto turned to her. _Compassion_ stared back at her consideringly. The excess kohl around her eyes made her look innocent to the horror of her suggestion. “Yeah? Five billion years? With my lifespan?” Ianto snarled bitterly. “How many years would Jack have to spend without me, between every day I spend with him? What kind of life would that be for him, hoarding my days like a miser?”

“Then, in the year 5.5/apple/53, when the being once known as Jack Harkness dies, the words ‘Ianto Jones’ will hold no meaning for him.”

Ianto stared horrified. She swallowed past the lump in her throat. “You’ll be there; you can remind him of his family.”

“Will I? The infinite universe makes all lifespans the same length.”

::-::

“I’d live whole lifetimes without Ianto, for a single day?” Jack asked.

 _Compassion_ -Doctor stared quietly at him.

A terrible, horrible, no-good-very-bad thought crept up in Jack’s brain. He turned to look at Compassion. The ship always took a body-form that held meaning for whatever particular conversation they were having.

“No. Don’t you dare!” Jack demanded. “Don’t you dare make her like me! Not even if she begs, swear to me, please.”

“I won’t. Relax, Jack. The thought never even crossed her mind.”

::-::

“Why are you telling me this?” Ianto snarled. “What’s the point?”

“I like happy endings… If I can build the right timeline, billions and billions will live happily ever after.”

“So, what’s the right choice?”

 _Compassion_ took a breath to answer, and then stalled. “I don’t know.”

“Well, that’s helpful.”

Ianto stared up at the universe above her for a long time. “No,” she said finally. “I _will_ spend all my time at once. If I stretched it out, Jack would spend multiple lifetimes between each day, forgetting me and building a life only to have it interrupted. Or worse, he’d do nothing, drifting through the millennia only living for a single day. This is better.” Ianto felt her time-senses syncing with her choice. It was a good choice; it would lead to a good timeline. “My child will have children of her own, and they’ll have children, all the way down. Jack won’t ever be alone.”

“Her?” Jack voice drifted up from the entranceway below. “We’re having a daughter?”

Ianto twisted around on the hull until she was belly down and let her head hang over the front edge. The doors were open and she saw an upside-down view of the console room. Jack stood not three feet inside.

“Yeah, a daughter. _Compassion_ told me.” Ianto looked up but _Compassion’s_ body-form was no longer in sight.

Jack approached and reached up for her. She reached down for him and he slid her off the hull and into the ship.

They held each other tightly, overwhelmed by the future ahead of them.

**Church-ship _Justinian_**

Kovarian sighed. Her options at this point were limited. In a few generations, the first Family of Shadow would be too ingrained into the timestream to effect an unproblematic redaction. She could destroy the first daughter, but that would solve nothing—only delay. Jack Harkness would have more children. Oh, he would take time to mourn, but eventually, he and his abominable mate would make more and her ship’s endeavor would be proven moot. She needed to kill them all--well, in Jack’s case, neutralize for all eternity… _perhaps a black hole_ …no, an accident, yes. Early model space stations were so unreliable in their atmosphere retention. That man could do nothing if he drifted frozen through space for eternity.

The simple solutions were sometimes better.

Why waste money and effort on a containment system when space could do just as well.

 

**Batoka Trading Station – 2010**

Ianto watched carefully as Rhosyn explored the various stalls selling in the Batoka spacestation shopping district. Above them, through the plasmetal lattice work holding in the atmosphere, she could see the blues and greens of a nebula. She didn’t know the name of it, but it was quite pretty. As pretty as she remembered it, the first time she saw it.

The memory unfolded in her mind. She had been here before. It had been the first extraterrestrial stop after she and Jack had left Earth. Which meant…

Ianto spun around trying to examine every face for malicious intent. There was nothing out of the ordinary, and even if there was, what could she do about it. Compassion was parked at one of the long-term air tunnels. Jack was off securing spare parts. She had her screwdriver in her pocket and her blaster on her hip but that was it for offensive supplies.

“Rhosyn!”

“Mam!”

“Stay close to me!”

Rhosyn skipped back to her mother’s side. “You’ve got red on you,” she pointed.

On Ianto’s arm were three red lines, drawn from lipstick. Ianto grabbed Rhosyn’s hand.

Now there were five lines. They were surrounded.

The atmospherics system shifted with a click-hiss. _Rhosyn wasn’t the target; she’d be safer if she ran_.

Ianto undid the strap around her wrist. She fastened the manipulator around Rhosyn’s arm. “I need you to run, can you do that for me? Get to the ship.”

“Mum?”

Eight lines.

“Go, now.”

Rhosyn ran. Ianto watched her duck under a stall; she followed her progress until she disappeared under hung draperies.

“I know you’re here,” Ianto called out.

Some passing aliens stared at her.

A little girl screamed. It was Rhosyn.

Where was her daughter? Why had she sent her away? It wasn’t safe. _Oh god_.

Ianto ran in the direction she’d last seen her daughter, shouting her name as she went. She eventually found her in an alley with an earlier Jack and her first self. She ran forwards and kneeled down, hugging Rhosyn. “Oh god, my cariad.”

 “Mam!” Rhosyn pointed behind Jack and Ianto.

Ianto spun and found three tall aliens standing at the mouth of the alley. The newcomers had bulbous heads with no mouths over black suits made of slimy material. The three aliens titled their heads and hissed, they pointed with long fingers.

She saw her previous self reach around Jack’s waist to Jack’s gun. He pulled it out from the holster and shot each alien between the eyes.

Jack turned to him and shouted. “What the hell?” He yanked the gun from Ianto’s hand. “You can’t shoot bullets in a pressurized dome!” he pointed up at the transparent panels high overhead.

“I’ve seen them before,” The First Ianto stated. “In Carmarthen, and at Brecon Beacons, at Flat Holm and Whitehall. They’re everywhere. They keep following me, and attacking.”

“What are you talking about? Seen what?” he grabbed Jack’s jaw and physically turned his head towards the dead creatures. “Woah.”

Ianto came up to them, “you shouldn’t be here,” she said sternly, standing beside them on Jack’s right side. She stared annoyed at her younger self. “You _really_ shouldn’t be here.” She kept on hand on Rhosyn’s head where she stood behind her mother’s leg.

“We don’t want to start a territory dispute,” Jack gave her his most sincere ‘placate-the-threat’ smile. “We just want to buy a time ship, and then we’ll be out of your hair.”

“The only time ships here are the luxury models,” she answered.  “You couldn’t afford them.”

“I can be very persuasive,” Jack said.

It was time to stop this interaction before Jack invited his spouses to an accidental threesome…again. “I think your husband’s getting jealous.” Ianto told him.

“Who do I have to talk to,” Jack asked, “to see these luxury models?” Just by inflection, he managed to fill the question with innuendo.

Ianto rolled her eyes. “Oh for…” With a quick buzz of her sonic, Ianto fixed Jack’s vortex manipulator and implanted the coordinates she remembered getting sent to all those years ago, back when she was a he. “There, I fixed it, now go, _travel_.” The last word was laden with enough innuendo to fill a university.

Jack stared at her with confusion and gratitude. “Why?”

“It was cruel to break it. You’re not meant for the slow path and you’re not mean to be _here_. Now _go_! Find your answers.”  Every time Ianto spoke she felt the timeline syncing around her words. Even though she was making up what she said, she knew it was what she remembered herself saying when she was he.

Of course, Jack wouldn’t find his answers there--hadn’t found his answers for decades. In the end, the answers hadn’t truly mattered. Story of his life really…he ran from the time agency because they stole two years of his memories, travelled with the Doctor for a bit, ostensibly to find the memories—but he never did….got turned into an immortal being, joined Torchwood to find the Doctor and get fixed—but he never did…

Jack typed a command into the wriststrap’s computer. “Thank you.” He held his Ianto’s hand on top of the control screen and with a flash and a crackle Jack and his Ianto disappeared from the station.

Ianto sighed. “You can come out now, he’s gone.”

Jack came up behind her. “Tad!” Rhosyn squealed. Jack lifted the girl into his arms, balancing her on the side of his hip. With his other arm, he hugged Ianto.

“He thought you were the Doctor,” he said to her.

“Mmm, yes. I’ve _never_ seen him obey so swiftly.”

 

**Capitol City, Gallifrey – 2003 B.T.W.**

The boy didn’t understand—anything. He ran as far from the school as he could. The teachers wouldn’t care, didn’t care… Most of the time he sat in the back of the class, not really understanding the concepts presented—m field theory, and quantum entanglements.

The others noticed, and teased him—telling him the untempered schism would eat him when it was his time because he would never be a Time Lord so stupid. The teachers were already pushing the Army as an option to his Crèche Masters.

At least school got him away from his fellow crèche children, for a few days at a time. The crèche was worse than the school. The children in the crèche used roentgen bricks to hurt him. It was the only time they paid him any attention.  It made his skin itch violently until he could expel it. He wasn’t any good at expelling excess radiation. The other children could shift the radiation through the spectrum shooting wisps of colors from their fingers. Sometimes they would push him or hit him, and throw colors his way, to make him think he was regenerating--then call him names and tease when he cried at losing a body so young.

There was no point to any of this. He would never be anything. He was tainted. The Crèche Matron said so. He shouldn’t have been eavesdropping, but it wasn’t his fault. He had just been trying to hide from the boys and no one ever checked the cupboard under the bathroom sinks.

She’d called him a half-breed to the Army recruiter—tainted stock, too much human code had survived. If they gave him a gun, he would slaughter them all with his violent tendencies. He didn’t know what a human was but it couldn’t be a good thing.

When the teacher mentioned the word “shooboogan” the boy had had enough.

He burst out of his hiding space and ran. He ran past their outstretched hands, through the halls—heedless of who he ran into. He just had to get out. He wouldn’t stop until he found someplace better.

Still small enough, he squeezed through the perimeter fence and continued running. He darted through traffic, and past anyone who could possibly stop him.

There was freedom in running. If he ran fast enough, maybe no one would come after him, too much trouble than he was worth. He was almost to the exterior shield wall when he felt a vent under his feet give way. He fell and tumbled down a stony shaft and landed with a thump.

The first thing he was aware of was the screaming--inhuman and horrible. He opened his eyes and saw, far above him, a shaft of sunlight from where he’d fallen. He was in a dusty, scary cavern, surrounded by screams.

A Time Lord in proper robes came towards him.

“I’m sorry,” the boy sniffled. He was crying, blubbering from the shock of the fall. It hadn’t hurt all that much really, or at least it didn’t still hurt. He wondered if he would regenerate from the fall. The hole in the ceiling was so far away, he had to have hurt himself badly enough. “Please, I’m sorry.” He didn’t even know what he was pleading for.

The Time Lord slid past him, screaming. The Time Lord’s face was merely a grainy projection flickering in the shadows of its cowl.

Someone would come looking for him. It would be better if he stayed where he was so they could find him from the hole he’d made above ground. Maybe they would realize he belonged back with his father and mother and he could go home.

**Batoka Trading Station – 2010**

Ianto kept her eyes focused forwards, on the bodies of the dead Silents. Now that she saw them, she was remembering all the other times she had seen them. She remembered why she and Jack hadn’t settled down anywhere to raise Rhosyn. The time vortex was no place for a child. She would have wanted a nice house, with a nice school. It always bothered her why they were still living in _Compassion_. Now she remembered why.  Every single time they tried to settle down, the Silence came. They were hunting her.

“Ianto, what’re you...” Jack turned to where she was looking. “Oh god. They just keep coming.”

Ianto’s face crumbled, and she stared at Rhosyn. Their daughter had her little arms wound round Jack’s neck, and her head on his shoulder. _She’s not safe here. Send her away_.

“…there’s only three…” Ianto stared at the eight lines on her arm.

The station shuddered in distress. People tripped, stalls fells, alarms blared. The ever present hum of the station engines stalled. Ianto felt her stomach swoop as the gravity system failed. Her previous downward inertia from the stations gravity would keep her feet on the floor as long as she didn’t move.

“Jack?”

Jack wound his arm around her waist and they stared drifting sideways from his motion. “Well, now I have no more hands,” he quipped. The three of them bumped into other inhabitants and things all pinballing in their own directions.

Ianto sonicked her surroundings. “The engines are below us…I could probably fix this.”

A terrifying crack echoed throughout the station. Everyone who could look up, did, and screamed. The plasmetal lattice work that formed the ceiling of the station was splintering. Outside a ship was firing on the station. With every shot the ceiling splintered more and more, the view of outerspace kaledioscoping with every fracture.

There was a mass panic. Beings tried to swim through the air to the safety exits, but it was a pointless endeavor. The lack of gravity made it impossible to move with any speed.

“We have to go,” Jack thrust Rhosyn towards Ianto. He began drifting away with the opposite inertia. He wrapped his legs around Ianto’s waist to hold steady.

“No, I can fix this!” Ianto fumbled with the sonic and she held tight to Rhosyn against her sideways motion.

Jack typed commands into his vortex manipulator. “No you can’t.” He held their hands against the strap and they disappeared with a crackle and smoke.

The station ceiling burst outward as the plasmetal finally lost structural integrity and the atmosphere burst out.

Jack, Ianto and Rhosyn appeared in midair outside Compassion’s ship-hull. Their ship’s gravity field immediately caught them and they fell onto the floor of the hermetically sealed long-term storage tunnel. The air lock door at the far end was cycled shut and so they were safe from the station depressurization.

Rhosyn sniffled in pain and Ianto hugged her tight, keeping her face turned away from the clear windows and all the dead bodies floating away from the station.

 

**Capitol City, Gallifrey – 2003 B.T.W.**

No one came looking for him. They probably didn’t care—were happy to see him gone. He would have to find his own way out.

The Sliders didn’t bother him that much. They came around in predictable cycles so were easy to ignore, like the ticking of a clock.

There had to be a way out, he just had to find it.

 

**Tardis _Compassion_ – Somewhen**

Suddenly, there was a knock on the exterior door.

Jack stared at the door. There was another knock.

Jack shrugged and opened the door. A small blue cube flew into the Tardis, twirled around the central console and settled on the jump seat.

::-::

Ianto stood in the doorway of Rhosyn’s bedroom. The child was fast asleep. This morning Ianto had found a letter in her pocket, written from herself to herself. She didn’t remember the creatures mentioned in the letter but that was what the creatures did…apparently… and they were after her. Rhosyn wasn’t safe with them anymore.

Who else could raise Rhosyn? They couldn’t exactly leave her in an orphanage. Besides the fact that River would kill them for that, an orphanage wasn’t exactly equipped to deal with a Time Lady. Only ten years old and she could pilot a Tardis. Ianto sighed. There really was no other choice.

::-::

Jack picked the box up. It was about four inches square, glowing blue and on one side was etched his name. Oh not “Jack”, no. The name his mothers had given him back on his naming day. He hadn’t seen or heard that name in millennia. No one alive right now knew that name.

The box began to speak. _“…Hoping I timed this right, be a bit awkward otherwise…”_ It was Jack’s voice. _“I’m only telling you this because you’re me and you understand. Ianto may be the Time Lord but he doesn’t really get it. He’s too linear…You’re trapped in a massive time loop; it spans billions of years, it’s too big…no way out. And I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, but if you break it, you’ll be dooming billions and billions of people…”_

 

**Capitol City, Gallifrey – 2003 B.T.W.**

Well, there was no way out. He’d been searching for days. He’d found strange creatures wired into the walls. Some had screamed at him or reached out for him, but always the Sliders were there with a distraction to help him get away.

He sat in a slightly less dusty corner and cried. What would happen to him? Would he stay down here forever? Regenerate through all his bodies where no one would see? Become a slider? Maybe that’s how the slider were created--unwanted little boys who had gotten lost.

A slider slid past him. A few moments later, the same screamer slid past him—too early in the cycle. It passed him again and again.

He stood and took notice of it.

“…hybrid-hy-hy-hy-hybrid” The Slider paused and screamed. “the hybrid comes. IT COMES!!!!”

The Slider slid to the center of the room, and slowly spun in circles.

The boy stood and approached the Screamer. “What’s the hybrid?”

“The hybrid will stand in the ruins of Gallifrey!!!”

“What is it?” he asked the Slider.

“destroy…billions billions billions billions” All the other Sliders converged on him. They surrounded him and the circling Slider. They all echoed his words.

“…unravel time, time unravel, time time unravel time time…”

“…the hybrid comes…comes comes comes comes comes…”

“…THE HYBRID THE HYBRID!!!...”

The Sliders were screaming at him. It was so loud, he curled up in a ball, with his hands over his ears.

They stopped and the caverns rang with the echoes, till all that was left was silence. When he looked up there was only one Sliders left in front of him.  It was still sliding in a circle over an etched pattern of stone.

“…leave come back…leave come back…128.54/badger.delta.468.3…leave come back…leave come back…128.54/badger.delta.468.3”

The floor wasn’t just etched with a random pattern. The lines on the stone were control patterns. He recognized the symbols of locking and protection. Maybe this was the way out.

He approached the Slider and it slid off into the shadows still echoing its final statement.

**Crafe Tec Heydra, Shadow - 45823/diamond.45 [200,000B.G.]**

“We’ll be waiting for you, right here. Do you know the coordinates?”

“Yes, mum.”

“You mustn’t forget. You’ll be gone a long time.”

“I know.”

Ianto reached over the picnic blanket and hugged Rhosyn tight.

Jack sat next to his wife, staring bleakly at them. It may have been the safest place in the universe, but right now, he wanted to shoot this planet, destroy it with his bare hands. The personalized invitation had been sent by himself so he knew they would all be safe and everything would work out. Rhosyn would eventually return, in just hours from their perspective. But his baby was leaving; he would miss her growing up. God he hated time loops. He had to send Rhosyn away because he had sent her away. He found himself stalking off away from their little picnic. When it was time to send that message he was gonna kick himself in the ass.

Rhosyn would be fine. Of course she would be fine. He recognized the planet. He recognized the picnic blanket. All this had happened before. Oh, but what a life. Rhosyn was going to be so upset…understandably so. He wouldn’t be surprised if she wanted nothing to do with them anymore.

Ianto may have been able to kid herself. They weren’t sending Rhosyn off to be safe. Ianto was being hunted; she would still be being hunted in the time it took Rhosyn to return. All they were doing was sending her off to grow up.

 _Jack Harkness, you liar._ No. Absolutely the only reason he’d agreed to this plan was because he had already agreed to this plan. It had all happened centuries before he’d ever met the Doctor and centuries after. He was trapped. They all were. He could never tell them. Oh he could—the universe wouldn’t end--but he didn’t want to see that look in Ianto’s eyes. So far, she had managed to avoid a true understanding of time travel. _An untempered Time Lord, there’s a contradiction._ He never wanted to see that look in her eyes.


	8. Chapter 8

_… the directionality of their temporal streams (e.g:  ……the nonsensical nature of time travel…. attempting to chronicle events,……will always be something that happened first even if it happened last. In fact, the whole area of Temporal Archaeology is a waste of this University’s resources and furthermore_ …… _THIS MAKES NO f…..g SENSE_. _—_ only surviving paperwork from Luna University, discovered melted to library desk, Author Unknown; recovered by Professor River Song, 9025 F.E.

**Arcadia, Gallifrey – 1553 B.T.W.**

The girl now known as Susan sat on the edge of a fountain. It was a quiet day. Arcadia was always quiet compared to the capitol, but even more so on Thursday afternoons. The crèche had graduated her today. The Matron told her she had learned all they had to teach her. She could choose her own path now, Army or Time Lord, the Matron said.

If only she knew.

In her knapsack, with all her worldly belongings, was a letter from her parents. It wasn’t for her, but rather for _him_. Her grandfather.

She was supposed to go with her grandfather. She’d be safe with him—no one had told her from what she’d be safe--just that she’d be safe. Before she’d arrived on Gallifrey, years ago, her father told her she was going to live with her grandfather for a time. Her mother had cried when she kissed Susan goodbye. They told her she would see them again—but not for a very long time, decades—longer than she’d been alive.

A groundcar approached and hovered up beside her. The driver window rolled down and an old man peered at her.

The man stared at her for a moment before speaking gruffly. “This is 128.54/badger.delta.468.3?”

Susan recognized her current coordinates in time and space. “Yes.” He matched the first images of her grandfather that her mother gave her.  She smiled. “Hello, grandfather.”

“Oh, yes. Truly?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Well, hello then.”  The passenger door opened.

Together they stole a junked time machine and ran away; him to freedom, her to safety.

**Crafe Tec Heydra, Shadow - 45823/diamond.45 [200,000B.G.]**

Ianto sat within the doorway of _Compassion_. The ship was disguised as a crack in the cliff wall. She watched as Jack lifted Rhosyn into his arms. She was a little too big for such gestures, but it would be the last time Jack could. They disappeared together, vanishing into smoke.

For a few moments, Ianto could hear the wind whistle through the canyon. Dust whisped over the checked picnic blanket still on the ground.

Jack returned alone.

He sat next to her. “I hate this,” he said.

 _Compassion_ sat next to them. “I’m sorry.” _Compassion_ wore the face of the Doctor. The freckles and big brown eyes created an aura of hopelessness.

“You knew?” Jack asked dully.

The ship’s body form looked away. She nodded. “I knew…” Weariness laced the words. She huffed a laugh mirthlessly…“everything.”

“Why don’t you do something?” Ianto asked. “You could protect her!”

 _Compassion_ stood up and paced, a grand departure of her usual method of movement—disappearing there and reappearing somewhere else within an eyeblink.

Her body-form changed. “I’m sorry this hurt you,” she spoke as a mouthy Australian. “This is the best possible ending I can make for him.”

“That’s impossible.” Jack shouted.

“I am a moment of infinite power. I can do what I want. No one can stop me.”

“You don’t have the right to do this!”

From one second to the next, _Compassion_ turned into a Victorian governess. “You stupid boy, no one has the right to do anything! Rights aren’t given; they’re won, in blood and war. And I was in the greatest war in the universe.”

“NO! You’re changing things for one man? What’s good for one person can be disaster for another!”

“That’s life! Every great decision creates ripples, like a huge boulder dropped in a pond, the ripples merge, rebound off the banks in unforeseeable ways. Do you turn left or right, who lives or dies because you caused a traffic collision?”

“You said ‘him,’ who is it?” Ianto asked softly, trying to diffuse the argument.

 _Compassion_ morphed into Rose. “For one shining moment I loved him, and I made a promise…to make one man happy, truly and absolutely happy. The name you choose is a promise. He spared me, he saved me. He stopped me from killing 2.47 billion children. I swore in that moment I would give him what he gave me, compassion.”

She took a deep breath—calmed herself--an affectation, but it gave them all a second to calm down. “The crèche on Gallifrey have already given her a new identity, some training. Her grandfather knows the coordinates to find her. Rhosyn will return to you, you know this.

“Everything that has happened to her, will happen, and nothing worse.”

**Totter’s Lane, London, Earth 1962**

“We should be safe here, mmm yes, quite safe.” The Doctor nodded, glancing around the junkyard. “Earth 1960’s, yes, right where we need to be.”

Susan’s attention snapped to him. “Sixties? Grandfather, we need the seventies. We’re too early.”

“Nonsense, my dear. I remember quite clearly, the letter said, “Sixties”.”

Susan sighed and returned to the Tardis console. “No. We need to be after the moon landing.” She pushed the buttons for a pre-flight check.

The Doctor entered behind her. She closed the doors and switched the toggles for the flight actuators. Nothing happened. The Tardis would not leave. Susan received an overwhelming sense of belonging from the Tardis telepathic sensors. The old girl knew she needed to be here, and wouldn’t leave.

Susan sighed. She had planned on living through the seventies on earth. Her father had once told her that was an awesome era. Now all her prepared knowledge was out of date. She hoped she didn’t say anything wrong to her teachers to make them suspicious.

**Capitol City, Shadow – 100,000 B.G.**

As Shadow rotated in orbit, Capitol City slowly approached the solar terminus. It would be a new day in a few hours. Visitors to Capitol City wouldn’t be fooled for long by its unimaginative name. It was a beautiful sprawling metropolis. Thousands of years of history condensed into one city--the oldest buildings on the planet shared space with the newest construction. Most everything had a shiny opal sheen to it, as solar absorbers were bolted to every possible surface.

The Hereditary Home of the Planetary Advisors sat a little way off center, closer to the Cultural sector than the government sector. That was on purpose. When the duly elected government had to receive their lawfully required advising they had to travel through art and beauty before they could pass any law. Of course, the Advisor had no real voting power, it wouldn’t be fair, IT had been alive since Shadow’s beginning and would be alive for millennia more--never elected, never dying-- so IT just dispensed advice – take it or leave it.

::-::

The fifth Ianto stood at the window, staring out at the city. Directly across from his window, he could see the Capitol City’s opera house. A billboard proclaimed that Trichant Pedwar would be singing her arias for five more days, before continuing on her tour. Ianto was so proud of her, well he was proud of all his children. She’d always liked the sound of her given name, so she’d never chosen another. Ianto had never had the heart to tell her what it meant in the old Welsh language, though he suspected she already knew. His children were perceptive like that.

A snore broke through his reverie. Ianto turned and glanced at Jack snoring into the bed sheets. Over 6000 years and four bodies straight with that man. New bodies were always contemplative at the beginning. Oh the basic framework was there. He loved Jack, he loved all his children. But he no longer felt such a desperate need to be with Jack every second of every day. In fact, he maybe wanted to go exploring on his own.

 

**Church-ship _Justinian_**

No more. No more would Kovarian slave her ship to the time stream. It was too late now. She had exhausted every chance.

Her pandorica - failed.

Her silence - failed.

Killing the first family - failed.

Killing the first daughter - failed.

The child was safe, locked into the time stream. Shadow was fully seeded. The Time Lords were back. Of course, she still didn’t know how the Doctor had the time to create so many time lord people. But she didn’t doubt his tenacity.

Kovarian truly, absolutely hated that man. That man who dared call himself Doctor, as though to heal the universe, when all he did was wreck destruction upon it. How many planets had he torn down in the name of his morality, his ethics? Who was he to be judge, jury, and executioner?

He had to be stopped. Not just the man--but the idea. Every bit of him and his influence needed to be excised from the timeline.

Soon, the people on Shadow would develop time travel, and they would be unstoppable. A plague on the universe.

While the Doctor lived and died in a stalemate on Trenzalore, it was Kovarian’s faith-bound duty to see that his values died with him. The only option left to her was to climb out of real time, surf the vortex for weak causality points and try to do as much damage as possible to Shadow and its people.

Kovarian inputted the commands into the computer. Jumping to the timestream this near to all her previous temporal activities would play havoc with the crew’s personal temporal fields. Well, they would just have to deal with the changes. She would accept no dereliction of duty – if they had to work in child size uniforms, so be it.

**Stormcage**

Ianto hadn’t been out of _Compassion_ for five minutes before he found trouble. Well, he hadn’t been aiming for here, but here was where he needed to be, as usual.

He found himself slunking through damp corridors, exploring the place that had been his mother’s home for so many centuries. It was a bit dreary to be sure, smelled musty. The atmos repellant system couldn’t be a hundred percent effective against a storm this massive.

From a corner, a squad of jail guards approached him.

“Hello,” he said cheerfully. Always act like you belong.

The squad leader snapped off a salute and spoke. “Sir, River Song has returned.”

“Right, good, yes that’s… good?”

The squad stood there, waiting.

Ianto improvised. “I’m a bit concerned about the prisoners…just a feeling you understand…I’d like an escort to my office.”

The squad surrounded him in a diamond formation and off they went—Ianto subtly following off the point man’s direction cues.

They went up a few levels and across a footbridge to the warden’s office. Ianto didn’t think it would be a good idea to have them so nearby when they realized he was an imposter.

“Could you all check the exterior perimeter,” he gave them a little shooing motion. There was always a perimeter to check with prisons. “Off you go.”

They left, perplexed, but like all good—i.e. dumb—guards, they left.

 _Ah, not dumb._ Ianto entered the warden’s office and was faced with a wall of pictures hanging over a desk. Obviously all the previous wardens of Stormcage stretching back to its inception—and last in the line was an image of his current face.

 _Right. Time to leave._ He didn’t want to bump into himself.

Ianto made his way back to _Compassion_.

 _At some point I become warden of Stormcage?_ He made a mental note to remember to do that sometime in the future.

Inside the ship, he flipped the switches for a random location.

The ship left disappeared and reappeared somewhere.

Ianto exited the ship in a damp corridor which smelled a bit musty. A storm raged outside the building. He was still in Stormcage, just moved over a few corridors and a few decades back.

_Well, why not now?_

**Darillium – 5340**

With a crackle and smoke, two figures appeared at the base of the singing towers. The towers were quiet now—the wind having died down.

River looked out at the restaurant balcony where, many years ago, and just one month past, the Doctor had finally taken her on their final date.

“I don’t get it…” her son was staring up at the massive stone towers.

Five years ago, she had been pregnant. Two years ago, she had been working beside her 26 year old son at Torchwood. Now she was back where she started, on Darillium, with a son millennia older than herself. Oh, Barnabus-Ianto (oh he’d always be Barnabus to her) was a fine example of a son. She was sure she would be proud of his accomplishments, if he could ever tell her of them, barring spoilers. He looked happy. Like there wasn’t a temporal entanglement over his head, like he could live with his husband in the right order, never knowing what happened next.

“Get what?” she asked.

“The Towers,” he pointed. “They’re just _there_ …”

The bluntness took her aback. “You don’t like them?”

“It’s just… _The Singing Towers of Darillium_ , thought they’d be a bit more…” he made a massive motion with his hands, seeming to sketch a doughnut in midair. “…Ya-know?”

“Well, you have to wait for the singing, dear.”

There was an awkward lull as both parties tried to think of something to say…almost in sync they decided to start walking towards the Restaurant.

“You’re…coming with me?” River asked.

“Well, thought I’d see dad, say ‘Hi’.” Barnabus answered brightly.

“I never told him I was pregnant.”

“Pretty sure he knows…you don’t think it was a coincidence he was at my birth.”

“Oh, that man!”

 

**Crafe Tec Heydra, Shadow - 45823/diamond.45 [200,000B.G.]**

As the day waned, Ianto found Jack’s attitude unbearable. It was bad enough sending Rhosyn off to safety but she couldn’t also handle her husband ignoring her. At first, she had waited in the console room, but after glancing to the door for the fiftieth time, she decided that was agonizing.

Now she lay in the Gardens. A wide open verdant woodland surrounded her, with the greenest leafs and the bluest streams…it was utterly perfect…Ianto hated it. There was something niggling in her mind, like a fact she’d forgotten. Still, Rhosyn was sa…

…Realization hit.

Oh, stupid Ianto. She was still thinking like a human. Rhosyn was coming back...to now…of course she was, Ianto told her the coordinates. How would she be safe? She was coming back to the now, where Ianto was being hunted. Oh she’d be older, and there was safety with wisdom…but…older…older…oh god….the picnic…Susan…Torchwood…Daleks…

::-::

Jack found himself idly flipping switches in the Tardis console room. There was nothing to do but wait. Rhosyn would be coming home soon. A green toggle made the pool room turn blue, a red flip made gravity shift along corridor 4/Honey.

Ianto walked up to him. “How long have you known?”

He didn’t need to ask what she meant. “Since yesterday,” he answered, not looking at his wife, “since she was born, since I first went travelling with the Doctor.”

“Explain.”

“There’s no such thing as a rose blossom on Gallifrey, the closest they have is an arkytior plant. Means Susan in English.”

“We sent her away based on a translation error?”

“This was taken in 1962.”Jack brought up an archive photo on the tactical display—a grainy black and white image of an old man and young woman standing by a junkyard entrance. “I saw it by accident one day, when I was fixing the Doctor’s Tardis. He shouted at me, he was so angry I thought he would throw me out the ship mid-vortex.” It was the Doctor and Rhosyn- _Susan_.

Ianto smacked the console. “You said she’d be safe, you agreed with me!”

“I did.”

“You lied.”

“I did.”

“Why!”

“You wouldn’t understand…you’re too…” Jack trailed off, turning away.

“…’too’ what?” Ianto demanded.

“…human.”

Ianto grabbed onto Jack’s lapels, dragged him to face her. “Then use small words.”

Jack brushed off her hands. “We are trapped! I don’t know how. I don’t know when it began, how it began, but we are trapped in a giant loop. Everything we are doing, has already happened.”

“I can see time loops— _time lord,_ here—I don’t see one around us.”

“You can’t see it when you’re part of it.”

“We have a Tardis, we can break out, stop letting pre-destiny control us.”

“It stretches for billions of years, affecting trillions of people.”

“No.”

“In the year 5.5/apple/26, the sun expands and Earth is destroyed and a young woman named Rose Tyler meets the being once known as Jack Harkness; three months later, in 1941 she meets Jack Harkness; three months later, in 200,100 she controls all of time and space and brings him back to life—forever. Now does she do that because she loves him and wants to save him, or does she do it because she can see what he will become, because she had already met a Jack who was 5 billion years old, who had done everything Jack was going to do?”

Ianto scoffed. “You can’t believe that one decision has written the rest of your life?”

“I am the nexus for a massive paradox!” Jack screamed. “If we don’t do everything just right, the universe could collapse.”

“You don’t know that!”

Jack stalked over and opened a drawer from the wall. He pulled out a glowing blue cube… “I told myself, so I know it’s true.”

The cube began speaking. _“…Hoping I timed this right, be a bit awkward otherwise…”_ It was Jack’s voice. _“I’m only telling you this because you’re me and you understand. Ianto may be the Time Lord but he doesn’t really get it. He’s too linear…”_

 

**Darillium – 5340**

“Is this another one of your husbands?” The Doctor frowned at them when they walked up to him in the Supreme Dining Room of the _Best Bed and Breakfast on Darillium_. “…what you do in your own time is fine, dear, but I’m not having him in our bed.” The Doctor was sat at a table nearest the window, watching the morning night sky.

River froze. “So much for already knowing,” she sneered at her and the Doctor’s son.

Barnabus froze with a look of pure squick on his face. “Dad?”

The Doctor blinked. “Oh, right. Is it that time, then?” He adjusted the cuffs of his suit.

“Yup.”

The Doctor visibly gathered himself. “Right.” He stood up and held his hand out. “Come on, times a-wasting.”

Barnabus handed the Doctor his vortex manipulator.

The Doctor disappeared.

The Doctor reappeared. “Where am I going, again?”

Barnabus told him.

The Doctor disappeared.

The Doctor reappeared in a hoodie and sunglasses. “Are we all caught up, now?”

Barnabus shook his head. “Mum hasn’t been home yet.”

“What?” River demanded.

The Doctor fastened the manipulator around River’s wrist.

“Wait!” River shouted.

“Oh relax; you’ll have loads of fun with Bowtie. See you in a few seconds.” The Doctor pressed the activation switch.

“Don’t you da—!” River disappeared.

A few seconds later, River reappeared in different clothes, face blotchy with tears she quickly swallowed away.

“But that means…” she started.

The Doctor nodded. “Yup.”

“You knew, and I knew, but I didn’t know you knew so you couldn’t let me know?”

The three of them noticed the quiet all around them. The other residents had all stopped eating and were staring at them in confusion.

“Don’t bother your pudding brains. It’s not supposed to make sense,” The Doctor told the viewers.

**Greater Magellanic Causeway, 548-743**

River cradled her newborn baby against her breast, already the boy was latching on. She rested her head against her pack. A thin pad and blanket were all that protected her from the hard ground. The abandoned planet was not one for comfort; especially on this little spit of land, in a monsoon. It was just luck that she had gotten the bivouac up before the contractions became debilitating.

“A healthy specimen,” the Nurse Handbot spoke. “I can take a bio-sample and provide a probability-view for future genetic anomalies.” The bot sterilized between River’s legs and drew the skirt back around her knees.

 “No, thank you.” One hand cradling the baby, she drew her blaster from its holster. The Nurse Handbot vaporized into nothingness with one shot.

The shot disturbed the baby who began crying. “Shh, shh. It’s okay, my love. Shh. Everything will be okay.”

“Now, now,” chided a Scottish male voice from outside. A man with angry eyebrows wearing a suit lifted up the bivouac flap and strode in. “Let’s not give the lad false hope, Sweetie.” He tutted at the powdery remains of the handbot and knelt at River’s side.

The Doctor’s stern face transformed with a wide smile.  “Hello, Barnabus.” He wiggled his fingers at the baby.

“We are not naming him Barnabus!” River said sternly.

The Doctor shrugged. “Too late. The dude’s been Barnabus for centuries.”

“Dude?”

“Hmm? Yes. Dude. Dooood.” The Doctor helped her to her feet and when that proved too much for her legs, lifted her into his arms while she held Barnabus in her arms. He carried her through the flap and into the Tardis Medical bay.

That clever man, he’d materialized the Tardis right around her little tent.

“I didn’t hear you materialize.”

He laid her out on a bio-bed and he pulled down a computer screen from a ceiling armature. “Well, you were screaming quite a lot…and cursing my penis…my parents…my very existence.” The biobed monitor bleeped. He checked the results. “You’re both perfectly healthy. None the worse for spending a pregnancy hopping all over the time stream. He’ll have a full set of regenerations, which I already knew, but you didn’t, so there you go. And another little spoiler for you, since you’re so good at keeping them. He’ll be the First Scion of a New Gallifrey.”

Which was the bigger to swallow: truth or lie? That she’d left that face sleeping on Darilium, with no intention to ever come back until she’d finished raising their child alone? That when she first met that face on Mendorax Dellora was not really the first time, but a lie that River utilized for the success of the diamond?

Let him think she was a younger self. “So where are we?” She reached for the pouch at her waist that held her ever-present diary.

“Off-book.” He stared hard at her. “This face and all the ones after, they stay off-book.” His tone brooked no argument. So she wasn’t the only one using the freedom of things not written in the diary.

“I’m dead, aren’t I?” A safe bet.

“Everyone is dead to me. Everyone is alive to me. You’re just stories. I take you off the shelves to read and enjoy and I put you back when I’m done. And sometimes, if I’m very lucky, I find a passage I missed the first time. That’s what this is. A pleasant surprise I never thought I’d get to enjoy. You planned this so well. The Doctor-- _your Doctor_ \--never sees Barnabus grow up. But I can.”

He thought the child was from his previous self? So, sometime in her future, his past self finds out. Great, she’d have to make sure to let that happen.

 

**Manhattan, August 22 nd 1978**

Jack and Ianto would be okay. River nodded to herself, of course they would. She’d just left them back in 2009, about to start on their amazing journey. They had no idea of course. Her son had grown into such a fine person…all of them.

River leaned back against the alley wall for a moment while her head stopped spinning. It didn’t help that she’d landed so close to her previous visit. Still, this was the best way—need to keep the visits in order and leave enough time for untold future visits.

River took a breath of air filled with the smell of unconstrained industry--leaded petrol, smog. The alley she’d landed in must have been home to a few homeless, because she could also smell the unwashed masses.

The first time River had visited her parents was a few weeks after they’d landed. She had found her parents living in a little two room flat above an automat. They didn’t have much; a few sticks of furniture, a mattress on the floor, a shared bathroom at the end of the hall. Not surprising, considering they arrived in this time with nothing: no papers, no money.

River had delivered a copy of the Melody Malone book for Amy to type up and publish and a suitcase full of documents and account information to get them settled into this new time period.

The second time she’d visited, it was right after Barnabus was born. They had deserved to meet their grandchild.

Now she was visiting to tell them about all their great grand-children and the planet Shadow and Gallifrey’s return.

 

**London, September 11 th 2009**

The man who was once Mr. Frobisher left his house. He didn’t bother to lock the door. He wouldn’t be back. There was nothing to go back to. The family he thought he’d had never existed. This made the thought of having murdered them a little better to stomach, though not by much. He stood on the front path, stared at the sun for a moment, adjusted his hoodie, slid his sunglasses down off his hair onto his nose and set off.

There were enough military vehicles around that he didn’t have to walk long before he encountered one he could commandeer. When the soldiers tried to stop him, he stared at them over the edge of the glasses.

“I’m the Doctor,” he said as though that was enough information. It was, and the soldiers let him take the APC.

It was good to know that twenty years as a human hadn’t dulled his touch. He could still make armies turn around at the mention of his name. Now to find the vortex manipulator and get back home. _  
_


	9. Chapter 9

_Clara sometimes asks me if I dream. Of course I dream, I tell her. Everybody dreams. But what do you dream about, she’ll ask. Same thing everybody dreams about, I tell her. I dream about where I’m going. She always laughs at that. But you’re not going anywhere, you’re just wandering about. That’s not true. Not anymore. I have a new destination. My journey is the same as yours, the same as anyone’s. It’s taken me so many years, so many lifetimes, but at last I know where I’m going. Where I’ve always been going. Home, the long way round._ – Excerpt from The 1000 year diary by The Doctor

**Tardis – 1 B.G.**

The Doctor twiddled the switches on the console. He was bored. Clara had left five minutes ago, off home to do teaching things, she said. It was nearing December, didn’t school stop for a bit on the holidays? Was Clara trying to be discrete while she did humany things? It didn’t matter. With no one onboard to stand around looking impressed what was the point? His shoulders slumped and he stared up at the ceiling.

Well, that was long enough. He directed the Tardis to travel four days ahead. That would be enough time for teaching things, right? She’d have to take breaks eventually…

The Tardis landed with a thump and that beautiful wheeze. He gave the inert Moment box a little happy pat as he bounced past—didn’t want the most powerful weapon in the universe to think he was ignoring her/him/it. He yanked open the doors. “Clara, I just had the most brilliant idea…”

The Tardis was not in Clara’s living room. It wasn’t even on Earth.

The Tardis was somewhere on the night zone of a comfortably habitable moon….a massive pink planet filled most of the sky with a hazy light. He licked the air--slight metallic tinge—rain later. He was parked on a massive trail at the edge of a forest clearing.

Poosh. He was on the Missing Moon of Poosh. Well, No Longer Missing… he supposed they’d have to change the travel brochures.

He went off exploring.

He was in jail the next day.

**Poosh - 7.3/acorn/43**

River appeared in a jail cell with a crackle and smoke “…dare.”

“River!”  The Doctor lurched off the couch he sat on, climbed over the data table and hugged her. “Save me.”

“What is it? Sweetie, what’s wrong?”

“I’m…so…bored.”

River rolled her eyes. Living without this Doctor for so long had almost made her forget the way this one behaved. “And what do you want me to do about it?” she asked with her most sultry voice and a glance to the bed in the corner.

The Doctor stared and swallowed hard. “We could do…things?”

She laughed. “Oh bless. You have been here too long.” She held up her blaster. “What do you say to a jailbreak?”

“Yes, please.”

::-::

River and The Doctor burst into the Tardis followed by blaster fire. One of the side consoles sparked as a shot hit.

“Only you could make a peaceful escape so…bullet ridden.” The Doctor scolded.

River just laughed against the closed doors. She turned. “Oh, you changed the desktop theme.”

“Yeah, after…” he sighed. “…just… after.”

**Shadow - 1 B.G.**

Far enough into the future, when _anything_ is possible with enough power, effort, and time, a manufactured planet orbits a binary star. The suns rise in the east and set in the west. It has two moons, and is called _Shadow_ by its inhabitants. As a society they have their ups and their downs. But they are, by and large, peaceful explorers, often finding mates on other planets and returning home to raise the resulting children. Those children, when they are old enough, go out to explore and continue the cycle.

The amazing thing, the truly improbable, impossible thing, is that this world, this civilization, is descended from two people. Two people who had a child every few years for 24,000 years.

This society, this space faring, time traveling society, has a very peculiar religion that is unique in the entire sector. They worship the 13 archetypes who, during the Great Sadness, combined to create the world. The Wanderer, The Keeper, The Mother, The Healer, The Messenger, The Archivist, The Civilian, The Lover, The Investigator, The Helper, The Other, The Unknown, and The Troubled. The population worship these ideals via the Multi-Faced God who sits in protection in the Pantheon. Their God is real and guides them in difficult times during their lives, often taking the form of departed loved ones to impart ITs wisdom.

Along the equator are various weather controlled monuments. At the center of a multicolored mandala of small rocks, there sits a stone plinth in the shape of a box. At least once in every person’s life, they trek to one of these monuments. They tell their story to the box and leave a rock to continue the pattern.

 

**Tardis, 1 B.G.**

The Doctor hoped The Moment found her peace--wherever it ultimately ended up.

A million million miles from anywhere, surfing the vortex, the Doctor felt a shift in the timestream surrounding the Tardis. For a moment, the flow of time hiccoughed. At the diagnostic panel of the console, a warning toggle began twisting. When the Doctor flicked it, the viewscreen fuzzed and focused, showing a reddish orangey planet. It had two moons and was fifth in its binary sun system. It seemed to be nothing special in a cosmic sense, except it hadn’t been there yesterday and it had been there for a million years.

“That’s not possible,” the Doctor murmured.

River looked up from her diary-keeping. She was sat in a comfy chair near the upper archway “What is it?” she asked.

“I found a planet,” he answered, “brand new.” The Tardis scanner screen displayed signs of manufacture in the planet’s construction. For the eon and location, this was nothing special; half the worlds in this sector had been built to order somewhen in the past.

“Ooh, shall we go and christen it? It’s ever so much fun when we do that.”

A blush bloomed in his cheeks as he reminisced in agreement. He sputtered and pointed, “there are people there.” The numbers on the screen showed a population in the billions.

“An audience, then,” she crowed as she made her way down the stairs. “Haven’t tried that before, but first time for everything.”

“Ri-ver!”

At the monitor, she wrapped her arms around his waist. “Honestly,” she scoffed from behind him, “it’s like you’ve forgotten what it’s like to be four-hundred.” She gave him a peck on the cheek.

 

**Shadow, 1 B.G. Tuesday  11 a.m.**

The Tardis appeared silently on the edge of an apple orchard. The apples on the branches were not yet ready to eat, and the grass was pale red. Upon exiting, the Doctor took one step and stopped short. He was mentally bombarded by an overwhelming sense of home. River exited the Tardis, tugging on the handle slightly to be sure it latched closed. She didn’t need to see the Doctor’s expression to know he wasn’t seeing an apple orchard anymore. Even she, who had never seen Gallifrey, could appreciate how similar this was to a favored study spot of the Doctor in his younger years. His mind was shouting its shock for all to hear.

Down a small crest, there stood a two story red barn. The barn backed up against a wide river which curved around to the orchard then curved away. The barn door burst open and a young man ran out towards them. “Wait! Wait!” he shouted along the way. He was tall and gangly, with dark hair, a floppy hat and a farmer’s tan. In his haste, he tripped into the verge. He bounced back up, “I’m okay!”

“It’s you.” He smiled at them. “It is you, isn’t it?”

“Well, that depends on who you think we are,” The Doctor replied adjusting his bowtie.

The boy looked back and forth between them and the Tardis. “It is you, by The Dozen, it’s you! You’re here! I have to hail the Messenger.” He reached into his pocket, blanched and did the awkward repeated pat of the missing item. “Um, I left my phone,” he gestured to the barn. “Stay here, please, stay.” He ran back the way he came.

The Doctor was happy to sit down on the grass and wait. He propped his back against the Tardis.

“Are we not worried then?” she asked. “Being expected is rarely a good thing; it means they know who you are.”

The Doctor smiled, closing his eyes in contentment. “Nope, use your senses, something very big is keeping this place protected. My suggestion is to just enjoy the rest. Nothing bad is going to happen today.”

River sat next to him.

 

**Church-ship _Justinian_ 1, B.G.**

Kovarian ordered her techs to make a detailed scan of the planet and its environs. A message popped up on her datascreen: a Tardis had arrived on Shadow. An opportunity like this couldn’t be overlooked. It was as though her faith were rewarded. Oh she had taken a risk by desyncing her ship from realtime, but here was the prize. The Doctor, with his decedents all at one space and time. One swift attack would destroy them all; redacting the statemate at Trenzalore.

She sent a command that a squad of Confessors should attack and kill the Doctor. Very few of the inhabitants on this planet should have the conditioning needed to fight them off.

Two levels below her view port, the docking bay doors slid open and a small ship exited. She watched it, as it flew away from the mothership. Once a safe distance away, its rear engines flared blue and it shot towards the solar terminus line where it would be in view of the planet. Her soldiers would keep the forward facing cloak activated so that the inhabitants of the planet would be unawares of their approach.

 

**Shadow, 1 B.G. Tuesday  1 p.m.**

It was a bright and sunny day. The Doctor was happy to wait in the orchard for the Messenger (whoever he was) to arrive.

He lay on the grass, eyes closed, enjoying the shade provided by his time machine. The suns were low in the sky and the shadows were long. He knew River was keeping an eye on their surroundings, wary of threat. Her mind was always on the practical side of things.

“Enjoying yourself, doc?”

The Doctor knew that presence anywhere; the accent, the shortening of his name, the way his mind told him he was being compressed by a bear hug from a seven-foot tall bodybuilder as a way of interpreting the fixed-pointedness surrounding him. He frowned and squinted up at the figure standing in front of him. It was Captain Jack Harkness.

“Jack!” the Doctor bounced up.

“Doctor,” Jack said respectfully.

“Oh, come here.” The Doctor grabbed Jack in a hug and kissed one cheek and the other.

Behind Jack stood a cadre of silver-tone security-bots. The farm boy from before was stood to the side of them, shuffling nervously. There was a sleek speedboat pushed up to the banks of the river. A man with ginger hair and a lean face stood at the controls of the boat.

“ _Jack_ , are you someone important?” the Doctor asked.

“I’m the Messenger, permanent planetary advisor to Shadow.”

“Right, and how long has this been going on?”

Jack blew through his lips, “on and off, ‘bout a million years or so.”

The Doctor nodded for lack of a suitable reaction.

“Come, we’ve been waiting for you.” Jack signaled, and the security-bots affixed round discs to the sides of the Tardis. The Tardis vanished with the ion smell of a transmat. “Relax, doc. She’s safe in the capitol. Compassion will watch over her.” Jack led the Doctor and River onto the boat, where he introduced them to his ginger partner, The Archivist.

The Doctor missed the look passed between The Archivist and River.

::-::

High in orbit, as soon as the shuttle _Ariel_ exited the _Justinian’s_ force shield, it activated its own shielding. There was the tiniest moment when the ship was visible to the temporal EM spectrum, but that couldn’t be avoided. Two shield fields overlapping was a recipe for disaster.

The shuttle banked into an atmospheric entry curve in the middle of the night zone of the planet. External dampers absorbed the sonic shock as the shuttle decelerated though the sound barrier. No one on the planet’s surface heard the shuttle’s entry.

::-::

The boat traveled swiftly against the river current, bouncing atop the crests. At one point the land through which the boat traveled swelled up in cliff faces, which the water path had cut down over millions of years. As they passed, the Doctor saw a lone figure carved into the cliffs, down where someone walking on the shore could touch.

Jack noticed the Doctor staring and spoke above the roar of the water. “The cliffs of Crafe Tec Heydra,” He pointed further along the cliff wall where the carving was continued: fragmented buildings and wretched soldiers protecting a group of children, “it’s a war memorial.”

A shining city appeared on the horizon to the left. Solar panels draped over every vertical and horizontal surface gave the city an appearance of being made out of obsidian. Close to the water were one-story buildings, which gradually rose to skyscrapers in the distance. The boat slowed and bumped along a jetty. Jack threw a rope to a waterman who tied the boat to a wooden piling. A hover car waited for them at the end of the dock.

Jack pointed out the capitol building in the distance. It was a five story domed, columned affair, “that’s where I work. There’s someone there who needs to talk to you.”

The Archivist rolled his eyes. “That’s where _I_ work, he just likes to visit and bother.”

Jack thought a moment. “Yup,” he agreed.

The car drove itself past a parkland gates. The park seemed to take up an entire city block. The entrance was a wrought iron arch, framed on either side by a feminine and masculine stone figure.

A thousand memories and impressions flooded the Doctor’s senses.

-He was a young/old man/woman.

-He was planting a forest after a fire and composing music for the blind.

-He was gatecrashing a university party and making fun of the astrophysicists.

-He was giving birth for the second/third/fourth time.

-He was laughing. He was crying.

-He was saving a planet from a plague.

He was everyone who had ever visited that parkland; every single one of them striving for better. They went out and explored. They told stories. They lived history. They went out and used the wrong verbs, got charged twice, were kissed by complete strangers; shared a taxi at 2 a.m., and fell in love.

“What is that place?” the Doctor asked staring back through the window at the parkland.

“Hmm? The Mandala?” Jack answered, “Psychic repositories of Shadow’s inhabitants.”

At the capitol building, the car parked under a port cochere and they exited. An aged woman with red hair and poise greeted them at the door.

“Hello, Grandfather, Grandmother,” she greeted the Doctor and River.

“How?” he stared at her. Oh, the face was different; she must have regenerated a few times. But it was Susan…oh his Susan. The young girl he’d left behind on Earth had grown into a stately woman.

“Not long after you left me, I got a ride here; it was safer than on Earth. This is a safe place. Come, it’s time.”

The Doctor let himself be led by the hand. Here was Susan. His wonderful Susan.

“I’ve been waiting so long for your return.”

The Doctor felt shame bloom in his mind. “I’m sorry I never came back for you. Please, tell me, did you have a good life.”

Susan hedged. “On the whole yes. David and I had three wonderful children. I’ve had many more since then, no where near as many as Mum and Dad, but a lot. They all had children of their own. I skip around a lot, wanting to meet the whole lineage.”

“Can I meet them?”

“All of them at once? That’s a space time tangle.” She bumped shoulders with him. “We like this planet, granddad, let’s not go blowing it up for the sake of a reunion.”

The Doctor stopped in his tracks. “So many?”

Susan hummed. “I decided to stop at 100, but Mum and Dad are still going at it. Well, Mum’s in the wrong body for it right now, but they still go at it, bless.”

Beside them; River, Jack and the Archivist giggled at the Doctor’s eurgh face.

“This entire planet is filled with our descendants and their families,” she concluded.

Recalling the scans the Tardis made about the planet— _fully seeded--_ Tears filled the Doctor’s eyes. “How many, please, how many are here?”

“About four billion, at last census,” The Archivist answered. He had a nice voice, soft and firm. The Doctor stared at him, uncomprehendingly.

“Four billion?” The Doctor hugged The Archivist and kissed him on the mouth in excitement.

Jack began laughing hard at the look on the Archivist’s face.

The Doctor turned his attention to River. “Four billion!”

“I heard,” she replied.

The Doctor kissed her and hugged her. He gathered them all in a giant group hug.

The Doctor let himself bask in the moment. His granddaughter and her parents had survived Gallifrey. Four billion people were descended from them. There were a whole planet full of Time Lords out there, and they were good ones; they’d have to be, from Susan’s stock.

A though niggled through his mind. Which of his children had had Susan? He’d never asked. He’d just picked her up in Arcadia and ran away. Mum and Dad she’d said-- _well, Mum’s in the wrong body for it—_ so he was looking for two men. Two men out of billions.

Another thought filtered through his mind. _Come, it’s time_ , she’d said. Time for what. All the pretty trappings and scenery, it was blinding him….to what?...He turned and the Archivist was the closest person to him as they were walking along interminable corridors.

“Archivist?”

The Archivist leaned away from the Doctor. “Are you going to kiss me again?”

The Doctor leaned away from the Archivist. “Do you want me to?”

“No!”

“Then I won’t. Where are we going?”

“My private transmat,” Jack answered, “hidden under the capitol mandala.”

“A transmat to _where_?”

“The Fields of Trenzalore.”

**Church-ship _Justinian,_ 1 B.G. Tuesday 2:30 p.m**

Kovarian looked at the planetary data. There was something she was missing, she could feel it. Hovering over her table was the 3D solar system in miniature, all four planets traveling around their two suns. _Wait,_ she counted again: four planets, _Shadow_ the outermost. Confused, she brought up the various documentation her Scientist-clerics had gathered.

In school textbooks, a picture showed _Shadow_ fifth in the system, the fourth planet an unnamed black rock. Travel brochures from nearby sectors mentioned _Shadow_ as fifth from the sun. Intergalactic shipping maps showed a five planet system.

**Shadow, 1 B. G., Tuesday 2:30 p.m.**

Both River and the Doctor froze in their tracks. It took a moment for Susan, Jack and the Archivist to notice. They turned to them.

River noticed the betrayed look the Doctor gave Jack and Susan. “Trenzalore. You’re taking me to Trenzalore?”

River turned to the Doctor, “…but Trenzalore is on the other side of the universe.” She’d discovered the location of the Doctor’s grave long ago, in an effort to avoid it. Just one more secret she’d kept from him.

“The one place I can never go?”

Jack took a step forward. “Doctor, no it’s…”

“Trenzalore is where I’m buried,” The Doctor explained sternly.

Jack shut his eyes in grief.

The Archivist spoke up, “Which Trenzalore?”

“What?” The Doctor asked nonplussed.

“Which one? The universe is big place; the name has been used quite a few times by now…in honor of your grave, in spite of it…so which one is your grave?”

**Church-ship _Justinian,_ 1 B.G, Tuesday 3 p.m.**

Kovarian flipped through a digital vacation pamphlet advertising the amazing beaches at the Tropic of Trenzalore. One of the northern continents of Shadow ended at a latitude called the Tropic of Trenzalore due to its alignment with the constellation of Trezalore (brightest star: Trenzalore) in the night sky.

With a sickening surety, Kovarian understood why the Doctor was content to sit a centuries-long siege on the _planet_ Trenzalore. Humans were always reusing names. There was a Not Mars, and a London2, and at least ten New Yorks. The man, who couldn’t bear a single year on the slow path with his companions on his _favorite_ planet, had waited over 1000 years among strangers. How could they have been so stupid? He _knew_ , all along he _knew_. The stalemate on Trenzalore was a diversion for his younger self. He was never going to bring forth the Time Lords via the crack in the town called Christmas; he had already brought them back here.

Her communicator bleeped an incoming message. She answered.

“Ma’am,” The face of Colonel Run Away appeared on the screen. “We have embedded ourselves in the key positions around the globe. Shall we proceed?”

Well, the Doctor would still die at Trenzalore. How appropriate.

“Proceed,” she answered.

 

**Shadow, 1 B. G., Tuesday 3:15 p.m.**

At key points along tectonic fault lines, embedded Faith Troops activated seismic charges. The troops were not transported away before detonation. They were some of the most devout soldier-clerics Kovarian had.

The whole planet shuddered with the explosions.

::-::

Deep underground, the Doctor, Susan, River, Jack and the Archivist fell to the ground with the explosion. The corridor cracked and creaked. Dust and stone fell from the ceiling, pelting them with debris.

“Da!” Susan cried out as a massive stone cracked Jack’s skull.

“WHAT?” The Doctor shouted in confusion. “He’s your…?”

The Archivist rolled his eyes. “Focus!” He dug Jack out of the rubble.

Jack came to life a moment later.

“Doctor,” River spoke. “We’re trapped.”

She was right. Both ends of the corridor were blocked by debris.

The Archivist scanned the air with his sonic. “The mantle is destabilizing. The planet is about to explode.”

Around them materialized the Tardis in time to save them as the corridor imploded and the planet exploded.

**Church-ship _Justinian,_ 1 B.G, Tuesday 3:30 p.m.**

Kovarian looked upon theslowly expanding  rubble of the planet Shadow and smiled upon her good work.

 

**Tardis, 1 B.G. Tuesday 3:30 p.m.**

The five of them stood in shock around the Tardis console. Shadow was gone. Destroyed. Susan stood at the scanner, trying to find any remains of her family, any sign of survivors.

“I shouldn’t have come here,” the Doctor stated.

“Sweetie…”River began.

“No. I was so complacent. _On the fields of Trenzalore, when no creature can speak falsely or fail to answer, a question will be asked, a question which must never be answered_. Those people are dead because of me.” The Doctor stalked off, past Jack and the Archivist, down the stairs and through the Tardis corridors.

He walked and walked until he finally had to stop at a dead end. His ship didn’t have dead end corridors.

“What?” he asked his ship, though he knew it couldn’t answer back.

“I can fix this,” a voice said behind him. The Moment stood, there, in the form of Rose Tyler.

“I thought you’d gone,” he said.

“I came back…the long way ‘round.”

“You can’t fix this.”

“Yes, I can.”

He believed her. A moment of infinite power could do anything. He’d once recreated the whole universe with a moment of infinite power. “I see you finally developed that ego,” he retorted.

“Let me fix this,” she pleaded.

“No,” he answered sternly. “I will never use you. I’ve seen what using you does. I won’t be your control. You want it, you do it yourself.”

 

**Shadow, 1 B.G. Tuesday  1 p.m.**

High in orbit, as soon as the shuttle _Ariel_ exited the _Justinian’s_ force shield, it activated its own shielding. There was the tiniest moment when the ship was visible to the temporal EM spectrum, but that couldn’t be avoided. Two shield fields overlapping was a recipe for disaster.

The shuttle banked into an atmospheric entry curve in the middle of the night zone of the planet. External dampers absorbed the sonic shock as the shuttle decelerated though the sound barrier. No one on the planet’s surface heard the shuttle’s entry.

::-::

On the planet’s surface, in interior rooms of every Mandala Cenotaph, thousands of aspects of the same being froze in whatever conversations they were currently having. THEY were man, woman, child; whatever form the petitioners felt comforted by the most.

THEY listened to the universe, a message from THEMSELF to THEMSELF, and found it was time. Time for that last act of death THEY had been saved from.

Supplicants the world over paused in their petitions, some said, “sir, are you okay,” others “ma’am, is something the matter.” Others still, who were perhaps more selfish in their desires (though all supplicants were listened to and answered, out of the respect for life THEY held), “hey, are you listening to me!?”

All the aspects of the being reverted back to its first form—the form it held when it did not commit that grand atrocity of the Last Great Time War.

None of the petitioners knew who that woman was.

“I’ve decided to _save_ you all… _I’ve decided_. This is what I am, what I was built for… I’ve enjoyed all your _stories_ , all your _tribulations_ …I know it will be hard, living without me, but you are all so brave…. Just go forward in your beliefs, and prove to me that I was not mistaken in mine; you’ll be brilliant, absolutely brilliant.”

**Church-ship _Justinian,_ 1 B.G. Tuesday 2 p.m.**

Kovarian looked at the planetary data. There was something she was missing, she could feel it. Hovering over her table was the 3D solar system in miniature, all four planets traveling around their two suns. _Wait,_ she counted again: four planets, _Shadow_ the outermost. Confused, she brought up the various documentation her Scientist-clerics had gathered.

In school textbooks, a picture showed _Shadow_ fifth in the system, the fourth planet an unnamed black rock. Travel brochures from nearby sectors mentioned _Shadow_ as fifth from the sun. Intergalactic shipping maps showed a five planet system.

Suddenly, her office viewscreen fuzzed with the image of a blonde woman. Her wide mouth and dark eyes seemed to stare out at everyone on board. “ _Are you afraid of the big bad wolf_?” she asked, and her eyes blazed yellow.

“Who are you!” Kovarian demanded. She pushed an alert for her security-clerics.

The woman on the screen tilted her head. “I’ll give you one chance. What you’re planning… _don’t._ ”

The screen cleared.

Kovarian was so close, she could taste it. She wouldn’t let some…specter stop her from the Church’s Final Victory against the Doctor.

 

**Church-ship _Justinian,_ 1 B.G, Tuesday 3 p.m.**

With a sickening surety, Kovarian understood why the Doctor was content to sit a centuries-long siege on the _planet_ Trenzalore. Humans were always reusing names. There was a Not Mars, and a London2, and at least ten New Yorks. The man, who couldn’t bear a single year on the slow path with his companions on his _favorite_ planet, had waited over 1000 years among strangers. How could they have been so stupid? He _knew_ , all along he _knew_. The stalemate on Trenzalore was a diversion for his younger self. He was never going to bring forth the Time Lords via the crack in the town called Christmas; he had already brought them back here, in the town of Trenzalore.

Her communicator bleeped an incoming message. She answered.

“Ma’am,” The face of Colonel Run Away appeared on the screen. “We have embedded ourselves in the key positions around the globe. Shall we proceed?”

Well, the Doctor would still die at Trenzalore. How appropriate.

“Proceed,” she answered.

**Shadow, 1 B. G., Tuesday 3:15 p.m.**

At key points along tectonic fault lines, embedded Faith Troops activated seismic charges. The troops were not transported away before detonation. They were some of the most devout soldier-clerics Kovarian had.

Nothing happened.

 

**Church-ship _Justinian,_ 1 B.G. 3:15 p.m.**

Kovarian watched with baited breath as nothing happened.

Nothing continued to happen on the surface. The planet should have broken up by now, torn apart by grav bombs along the tectonic plates.

Suddenly, every vidscreen fuzzed with the image of that blonde woman. “ _I warned you._ ” she said.

In her office, safe behind bulkheads, and force shields and thousands of Soldier-clerics, Kovarian felt she was being judged by that woman. She felt wanting. She felt small, like all the efforts and tribulations of her life were as nothing to the universe. She felt pointless.

Along every corridor and inside every room of the _Justinian_ , The Moment exploded.

Hundreds of people on _Shadow_ looked up in surprise as a great shock wave passed across the sky.

In _Shadow’s_ Capitol City, the Tardis _Compassion_ flicked out of existence.


	10. Chapter 10

_Once there was a planet much like any other. This planet sent the universe a message. A bell tolling among the stars, ringing out to all the dark corners of creation and everybody came to see. Although no one understood the message, everyone who heard it found themselves inspired_. – Excerpt from History of Shadow (condensed) by the Multi-Faced God, misquoting Tasha Lem, Mother Superious of the Papal Mainframe in her description of the planet Trenzalore.

**The Last Day of the Time War, Gallifrey, 0**

The War Room shook under the Daleks’ onslaught for the longest moment before the Thirteen Doctors enacted their insane plan. The General took one last look at his troops, not knowing if he should say something—anything—and then it was too late.

The whole planet shuddered with dimensional stresses. Every time lord—man, woman, and child—felt themselves shunted through existence. Everything stopped, but them. For a moment they were blinded and suffocated, as the EM spectrum froze around them and oxygen molecules stopped spinning. There was nothing.

Then there was everything.

Around the planet, there was no day or night. The sky shone with an eerie half light, a purple green yellow that didn’t so much illuminate as outline. Children cried and parents wept. But there were no more Daleks, there was only the destruction left behind.

Gallifrey waited.

Time held no meaning.

Days repeated and stretched and shrank. There was no hunger, no growth, no insanity. Just existence.

Gallifrey waited.

All anyone could do was send a question across the universe, begging for the Doctor to pinpoint a safe location to return.

_Doctor Who?_

Gallifrey waited.

**Christmas, Tenzalore**

_Doctor Who?_

The Doctor sat in his rocking chair, observing the crack in the universe, same as he had done for the past three hundred years. Another couple of centuries and he would have broken his previous record for longest time spent in one body.

It was a good body too, shame about the chin… and eyebrows--still a good one to end on. He really didn’t have any complaints. Sure his leg ached some nights, he’d had to get a wooden leg a few decades ago—only way to get away from a weeping angel—and the stump sometimes gave him grief. But on the other hand— _pirate_. He hoped Captain Avery was still enjoying his space ship. He could use a spaceship about now. Wouldn’t do him any good, of course; any technology would be destroyed before it could be used. It would still be nice to fiddle with something broken other than wooden toys.

He wondered what happened to his Tardis. He hoped Clara was okay. Though his companions did have a distressing tendency to come back and try to rescue him after he’d sent them home to be safe.

_Doctor Who?_

“You can stop moaning you know,” he told the crack. “I’m never gonna tell. Not now at least. ”

 

 **Trenzalore** , **Shadow, 1 B. G. 3:16 p.m.**

The Moment blinked back into existence.

She wasn’t dead. “Oh. I wasn’t expecting that.” She’d exploded. She had definitely exploded. She remembered exploding. What was she that she didn’t die after exploding? She was a weapon, she had been built to be a weapon. Now? Now what…

Now, Shadow was safe from Kovarian. Gallifrey would have a safe haven in the universe.

::-::

A transmat beam deposited The Doctor, River, Susan, Jack and the Archivist on a beach. It was pure white sands and the bluest seas as far as the eye could see—a view unblemished by civilization.

Right along the tree line stood a plinth: a stone monument, perfectly square on each side. It was etched with circular writing, and clockwork gears.

A crack in space and time bisected one side. It glowed with other dimensional light.

“Welcome to the Fields of Trenzalore,” Jack said.

“It’s time,” Susan told the Doctor.

_On the fields of Trenzalore, where no creature can speak falsely or fail to answer, a question will be asked. A question that must never be answered._

The Moment blinked into view. She stood against the stone box in the form of little Amelia.

“It’s time,” The Moment held out her hand—Amelia’s—hand. “You locked them away, safe beyond the universe. It’s time to bring them home.” The all-powerful being lisped with a child’s voice. “They’re waiting for you to tell them it’s safe.”

The Doctor shook his head. “It’s not safe. No where is safe. Gallifrey was once the Shining Jewel of the Seven Systems, but now? You don’t know what it was like at the end. Every moment in time was burning because of us. The universe hated us. I would be bringing them back to a slaughter.”

She looked up at him with Amelia’s eyes. “I’ll protect them,” she continued. “Gallifrey will never again be in danger from Daleks or Cybermen or any of the thousands of species I can see flashing through your mind. Not even from themselves. I’ve made it safe. I made this place, for millennia I have stood watch, guided these people. Gallifrey and its Shadow in perfect harmony, a hybrid of two peoples.”

_On the fields of Trenzalore, where no creature can speak falsely…_

“What is your name?” The Archivist asked.

Hearts thudding in his chest, the Doctor took her hand. He knelt down in front of the scar in the skin of the universe. His head came to rest against the stone, his hands caressing the join. He felt the differential winds blowing hot onto his face.

_Doctor who?_

**Gallifrey, 0**

“General!” a soldier ran into the War Room. “The Doctor has confirmed his name! It’s safe.”

The entire room broke into small cheers. There was still work to be done, rebuilding the destroyed infrastructure, reclaiming their lives, but after such a long wait, the General let them have this small celebration.

“Use the Infinity Engines and break through at safe coordinates nearest the Doctor’s position,” he instructed his Second.

“Yes, sir!”

Moments later, the General felt the ground shudder beneath his feet. The entire planet would be feeling the shaking as repurposed war machine engines pushed the planet through a scar in the fabric of the universe.

Across the planet, parents huddled with children under impromptu shelters, to protect against the falling debris. The shattered walls of Arcadia shuddered and groaned. In the capital, pieces of the shattered dome fell inward.

 

**Shadow, 1 A.G. Tuesday, 4 p.m.**

In space, in the blank area between the third planet and Shadow, Gallifrey phased into existence with her two moons.

**Manhattan, August 22 nd 1978**

River paused in her story and took a sip of her tea. It was cold and foul. Amy and Rory sat on one side of the patio table, River in the chair across from them.

“You can’t stop there,” Rory complained.

River smiled demurely. “Need to make a fresh pot,” she explained and took the tea service back into the house.

When she was alone in the kitchen, she let her composure fade.

They were so old. It was so close to the end. It was better this way, to keep the visits in order. After this she would finally return to Darillium, to her last night with the Doctor. It was fitting, she supposed.

“Are you okay?” Rory’s liver-spotted hand held tight to her shoulder. She hadn’t heard him come in.

She turned to him and smiled weakly. “I’m always okay.”

“I’m your dad; I can tell something’s bothering you.”

“I’m going to die soon,” she confessed. _And so are you, so I can tell you and it won’t matter_.

“No,” Rory tried to soothe her.

“The worst part is; I think the Doctor’s known all along.”

Rory hugged her. “You can’t think that.”

River began tearing up. “You can’t tell mum.”

“Tell me what?” Amy demanded. She saw the tears on River’s face. “Ooh, what’s that husband of yours done now? I’ll smack him for you. Don’t think I won’t.”

**Gallifrey, 1 A. G. Tuesday 4 p.m.**

Sister Ohila of Karn stood in her enclave on Gallifrey. Her sisterhood had been unfortunate in the end. Or fortunate… depending on perspective. They were visiting Gallifrey during the war, and had been trapped on the planet during the Nothing Times. Now they were free and could return to their home planet of Karn, in whatever form it took.

It had been necessary, of course, there was no doubt. They had needed to watch over the Man Who Was Not a Doctor--monitor him for instabilities. For centuries they watched as he fought the war, defeated the Nightmare Child and his Army of NeverWas.

Now it was over. They were back in the universe. Wherever here was.

::-::

In the capitol building, in the high council chamber, Lord Rassilon struck the Master a blow across the face. The Master laughed and again tried to throttle him.

The Master could feel his mongrel body breaking down; every surge of energy used was another pang of hunger. That was no matter. They could fight for all eternity here.

In the end the Master had won. He always won when the Doctor was concerned. The Doctor still couldn’t stand to kill him. The Doctor, for all his talk of peace and stopping wars, could never take a definitive step to win a war—as if mercy ever worked.

Well, the Doctor would just have to deal with the Master saving his life.

Rassilon threw the Master off, and the Master rolled almost off the elevated platform. It was a long drop to the bottom, but a hand grabbed his and stopped him. He looked up into an elderly woman’s eyes. _Oh, her_. _The Mother_.

“Thanks,” he quipped and launched himself up to tackle Rassilon.

The Master grabbed Rassilon’s head and smashed it into the platform, over and over till Rassilon stopped. Then the Master stopped too. He fell back next to the body, dazed, staring up at all the observer platforms hanging on the inner dome walls. There was no more energy left in his body, and he flickered between states uncontrollably.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw the regeneration energy seeping across Rassilon’s body.

“Oh come on,” the Master whined, “How do you still have bodies left, you old bastard?” Oh well, he had no energy to move out of the way. The regeneration energy flowed out of Rassilon in torrents and the Master was caught in the waves. The Master laughed joyously.

They both began changing.

**Christmas, Tenzalore**

Clara kneeled against the wall. Her hands caressed the crack in the universe. The Doctor was outside, facing an army of Daleks, and about to die. The Time Lords were just there, on the other side of the universe--had been there for centuries as the Doctor watched over them.

Without Handles the Cyberhead around, she couldn’t understand or even hear the signal that was still sounding across the world.

How could his own people still do nothing? If they could send a signal for the entire universe to hear even across a different universe, they could do something. Anything. The Doctor was out there, going to die for them--had lived for them for centuries stranded on this planet.

“Help him, help him change the future, do something,” she begged. “You’ve been asking a question and it’s time someone told you you’ve been getting it wrong. His name?”

He was going to die, and then no one would have an answer to the question the Time Lords were sending. They would be stranded forever in the other.

_Doctor who?_

“His name is the Doctor. All the name he needs, all you need to know about him. And if you love him and you should. Help him. Help him.”

  
**Gallifrey, 1 A.G.**

River exited the Tardis after the Doctor. The ship stood on observation balcony within the domed Capitol City. She stared through the cracked and broken shield wall at the devastated landscape. The Archivist and Jack joined them at the railing.

The four of them stood there, in the ruins of Gallifrey; taking it all in.

“We’re just pinpointing our position now,” the General told the Doctor beside her.

All three of them considered the massive reconstruction efforts about to begin.

“You’ve got some very nice neighbors,” The Doctor said. “ _I’d be nice to them if I were you_.”

“Rassilon is suffering from regeneration flux, hasn’t settled on a body yet. We need a strong leader now. You could retake your position as President. Guide us?”

The Doctor turned to the General. “I’d make a very bad president, I’ve got the missus, here. Council wouldn’t be safe. Assassin,” He pointed to River and leaned closer to the General as though imparting a secret, “kills Time Lords, you know.”

“Oh, just you dear,” River smiled sweetly.

The General blinked nonplussed, after the years he’d had, he wasn’t going to quibble over an assassin. “Is there nothing you want? You saved us, you and your children.”

::-::

In the communications tower, a lonely operator sat. His sole job for the past centuries had been to listen for an answer to the question--the oldest question in the universe.

Gallifrey was back, the question answered.

Now he was out of a job.

It was time to stop transmitting.

A signal came through his equipment. A woman was speaking to them, answering the question.

_“…Help him, help him change the future, do something. His name is the Doctor. All the name he needs, all you need to know about him, and if you love him and you should. Help him. Help him.”_

::-::

The General watched the Doctor and his family leave in their Tardis. There was work to be done.

::-::

Well, there was something a grateful planet could do for the Doctor. The General stared at the report from the communication tower. The Doctor was dying. So soon after saving them, the Doctor was dying of old age.

That bowtie wearing body had been his last face, except…then who had been the angry Doctor that showed up during the final Dalek attack. Obviously, the Doctor gained more regenerations.

The General sent a command to the Grand Imprimatur, authorizing the unlocking of a full extra regeneration cycle.

The War Hero of Gallifrey could not be left to just die on some backwards forgotten planet, not after everything he’d done for them.

 

**Shadow, 1 A.G. Tuesday, 5 p.m.**

The Doctor stood outside the gates to the Mandala Monument. He stared as a woman passed by. She walked beneath the wrought metal arch, either side of which had a blank stone figure; one male, one female. She picked her way through the mandala, following a safe path between the stones. She took her time, making sure not to disturb the pattern. In the center of the pattern was a stone carving. When she reached the monolith, she placed her hands upon the surface.

Even as far away as he is, the Doctor felt a psychic wash of _family, belonging, love, hope, happiness._

As the woman left, she stopped, took a greenish rock from her pocket and laid it near the end of the pattern.

The Doctor approached, following the same route the woman had taken. Up close he saw that the monument was worn smooth from thousands of hands during thousands of such visits. It was a near perfect replication of his Tardis. Except where the St. John’s Ambulance badge should have been was etched a single sentence, four words long. He let his fingers trace over the ‘ _not’_ and ‘ _alone_ ’.

The woman from before approached him. She was slightly shorter than the Doctor and wore her hair in tight coiled arches atop her head. She looked into his eyes for a long moment. “My parents told us one day you would come. We were created to be a balance for our other half.”

“What’s your name?”

“Maeunfil Pedwar Cantpum.”

“One Thousand Four Hundred and Five?” The Doctor asked.

“Yes, Miranda for short.”

“You’re okay with this? The Time Lords returning?”

“We’re all time lords here.”

 

**Sisters of Plentitude Hospital, New Earth, 5.5/Apple/53**

The Face of Boe took a breath. Today was his last day. He could no longer feel the animating force that had been his constant companion for five billion years. It was finally time. He hoped his Body enjoyed its last life.

“Go, find the Doctor,” he told his faithful nurse, “bring him here.”

She left, with only a minor grumbling. She had had to watch over him constantly for the past few years; monitoring the energy flow from his body to the undertown. His life force had help save thousands of lives from the Bliss virus, contained in the highways and underground.  Now the air was purified, and he could release the survivors into a new world, unencumbered by the never ending freeway.

He would need help. He would need the Doctor.

A figure appeared in front of his tank.

Jack Harkness squatted in front of the Face. The Face hadn’t seen Jack in millennia, ever since they agreed to part ways after that encounter with the Headless Monks.

“Hey, you,” the Face said.

“Hey, me.”

“We’re done, now.”

“Truly?” Tears sprung up in Jack’s eyes.

“You should enjoy it.”

Jack shook his head. “I’ve had enough. I’m gonna join Ianto. Do you want me to be here for you?”

The Face shook his head. “The Doctor comes.”

“Right.” Jack pressed his hand against the tank in farewell.

::-::

Jack watched from the other room, hidden, as the Doctor helped his Face save the undercity. He watched as his Face imparted his last great secret to the TimeLord, before dying.

_You Are Not Alone._

He watched as the Doctor and Martha left, and the Faithful Cat Nurse broken down into tears.

Jack smiled. Shadow and Gallifrey were thriving, had been thriving for millennia together. Ianto was long gone. Their descendants were travelling the universe, making it better.

It had been a long life, a good life. He was done.

Jack inputted coordinates into the vortex manipulator around his wrist. The safeties bleeped. He overrode them.

He vanished and never reappeared.

 

**London, Earth – 2013**

Once the sound of the last Tardis dematerializing faded, _Compassion_ hobbled back into the _Gallifrey_ wing of the Undergallery. She still wasn’t quite sure which foot to limp on, and how to coordinate the cane movements, but the Doctor-who-Forgets hadn’t seemed to notice.  The three Doctors had forgotten their tea service, which sat on the white bench, the only mark that anyone had been there. The tea was still warm. She poured herself a cup and sat, waiting, looking upon the painting _Gallifrey Falls No More._

Footsteps echoed in the hall as someone entered. The Doctor sat next to her, picked up his long-abandoned cup and drank from it. He studied the painting for quite a while with her.

He turned to her, startled and said, very Scottishly, “Oh, change faces, please.”

“I like it,” she said.

He scoffed. “How can you trust someone if they look back at you out of your own eyes?”

She sighed and looked at him with the face of Martha Jones.

“Really?”

She shrugged. She’d never been Martha, as far as she could recall. Of course, her conscience had been running for billions and billions of years non-stop—she might have forgotten. _What a novel sensation_.

“It’s either this, or teeth and curls.”

“You’ve gotten uppity in your old age. How old are you?”

“Older than you.”

“ _Jack Harkness_ is older than me, that’s no way to measure.”

“So…you’ve found Gallifrey. Where was it?”

“Right where I put it.”

She nodded. “Always the last place you look.”

There was silence as they contemplated the painting, then…

“Why did you do it?” he asked. “You changed history, for billions of people.”

“You showed me a better way of living your life,” she answered. “I just stood up and made a decision. One little tweak of the _tiiinieeest_ cell was all it _took_. ”

“Did you have the right?”

She snorted in amusement. “No, but I did it anyways.”

“I could stop you,” he said genially.

“No, you couldn’t,” she replied bluntly. Her expression gentled. “I tell you what you can do. You can be happy. You can run as far as you want and know that home will always be waiting.”

“Which home?”

“Whichever home you choose. Know that you will be accepted.”

“Why did you do this?”

“I saw the universe, and I thought this would be better.”

The Doctor scoffed. “Better for who?”

“Exactly.”

**  
**


	11. The Moment Afterword

_Compassion’s_ ship form stood in the Advisor’s Chambers. Alone, unused. Ianto’s descendants all had Tardis’s of their own, grown from Tardis corals from the fields of Gallifrey. Ianto was gone. Even Jack was finally gone. He had finally been able to join Ianto in whatever came after life.

A man opened the door to the antechamber. He was young—everyone was young to _Compassion_ —but old enough to leave, to go on his Wander.

He shouldn’t have been here. No one just entered the Advisor’s Chambers.

So he was curious, curious enough to be brave.

 _Compassion_ let her doors open, just a crack. Enough to show him the inside. _Oh, she was too old for this; she should be in a museum, not encouraging a young man to run away._

The man slipped inside her control room and stared in amazement.

“You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” he whispered to her. He caressed her flight actuators, warring with himself….He shouldn’t, not with the advisor’s ship, but he wanted to, what could she teach him…

So, what could she do but steal a time lord and run away.


	12. The Moment - deleted scene

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had to include this, I just loved it so much when I reread it, but it doesn't fit in anywhere.

The Moment sat down to write. The story of Gallifrey’s return needed to be chronicled for future generations:

_All good stories begin once upon a time._

_Once Upon A Time, a baby boy is born. As beginnings go, you can’t get more beginningest than a birth. Except the boy was conceived before his mother, or even his grandmother. Should start with them._

_It starts with a child._

_A little girl sits, waiting for a magical man to whisk her away in a time machine._

_Melody fiddles with a wooden rocking horse. The caretaker of the orphanage has told her that tomorrow is a big day for her. It’s not a barren couple, it never is, no matter that he tries to keep her hopes up._

_There’s always food, toys, learning materials, but no one ever brings the new things, no one ever comes, and they don’t ever leave. Every time they try to leave, something makes them want to stay._

_Tomorrow, something is going to happen. Melody turns to look at the picture on her desk. She doesn’t know the woman’s name, but the image is proof that someday, long ago, someone wanted her and was happy to see her._

_Thoughts of the woman bring to mind an evil man with a blue box. One day, she’ll rescue that woman, steal the box and live happily ever after with a mommy and daddy who love her._

_It starts with a child._

_No, the story isn’t about River. Not really._

_It starts with a child._

_A little girl sits, waiting for a magical man to whisk her away in a time machine._

_Susan has been told by her parents that her grandfather is going to look after her now. That he can protect her better than they can. She thinks they’re lying. There’s nothing her parents can’t do. They’re her parents._

_No, the story may have Susan, but…_

_A little girl sits, waiting for a magical man to whisk her away in a time machine._

_Amy Pond grew up with no parents and one friend. Amy Pond grew up with two parents and one friend. Amy Pond grew up with two parents and two friends, one of which was her daughter from the future who had never existed until after she was born—a state of being most people experience, true, but most people do it in the right order._

_No one will admit it, because then PhD’s in temporal mechanics would be worth less than the paper they’re printed on, but time is more like a puzzle. Once you get the borders lain out, you can put the pieces down in any order and still get the same result. Actually it’s nothing like that at all. It’s an orchestra, where one missing performer doesn’t really get noticed, but lose an entire section and the whole thing sounds off. It’s neither of those really; but they’re still nice metaphors._

_After so many paradoxes and time travel shenanigans, the universe just throws up its hands, goes “whatever” and jams a bassoon piece to a cloud and hopes no one notices._

_Amy isn’t even in this story, except as a mention. Could this story even have a start? If you were to go chronologically, this story would start with a mad man with a granddaughter and a box, or perhaps, further back, a mad man with a granddaughter and the idea of a box._

_Except the granddaughter must have parents, so they come first._

_Linearity is hard._

_No, back to the boy. Leave the parents and grandparent implied._

**Author's Note:**

> If anyone wants to know where I got the name Compassion from, check out the Eighth Doctor's books. He has a companion that turns into a Tardis.


End file.
